Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Traditionally, "tea" was a light meal people used to have about 4pm or so, to fill in the gap between lunch and dinner (which would be at perhaps 8 or 9pm). You'd have (obviously) tea to drink, and sandwiches and cake to eat.
Pretty much nobody does this any more (except in very posh hotels, cruise ships, etc). When "tea" is used as the name of a meal now, it pretty much always means the evening meal.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm
And then you have high tea - which is an early evening tea with meats, followe3d by a light meal later on. Unless you were working class, in which case high tea was afternoon tea and the evening meal rolled together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)
So actually your understanding of what tea is seems to be pretty much spot on! |
Up to my generation, depending on season and with different names, that was quite the same. We don't call it tea but merenda, In Quebec colation. For children, even now it is in use, around 4 to have a snack. For us it is maybe later and it becomes supper. It is very common in summer, outside. We call it colazione, pranzo e cena (for breakfast lunch and dinner). But, a little more formally it becomes: piccola colazione (petit dejeuner), colazione e pranzo (dinner). Cena is something you have after the evening entertainment. So if you are invited by somebody you are not familiar with, it is better to inquire. I let my wife do it: she obviously has more grace and social manners than me.
It is a meal that I like very much. In my family, the one I grew in, I mean with mother and father, we always had it like that on Sunday evening. I introduced it in my family, Wife, me and Little Girl and they like it very much. Little Girl insists on having herbal concoctions that she calls tea. Wife has beer, I stick to red. They eat toasts, what American would call grilled cheese, and some cake. I eat soup. Did you ear my mood dropping to the floor?