Quote:
Originally Posted by amward
Well here high tea IS a formal afternoon tea with sandwiches, petit fours and all manner of lovely things. There a quite a few places that specialise in high teas. On the other hand we call our evening meal tea but not high tea, it's generally only dinner if we are going out.
Fascinating all the different ways of using the same language.
|
High tea has been corrupted here to mean the same thing. People misunderstood "high" to mean posh or fancy, and spun the term "high tea" 180º, so that it's the virtual opposite of its original meaning. But in my curmudgeonly manner, I prefer unadulterated definitions and stick to the original.
A favorite example of where the same term means the exact opposite in English and American is the verb "to table." In the UK, to table a motion is to consider it; in the US, it means to put it aside. Two peoples divided by a common language and all that.