> 'Oh 7.30, but we won’t get there till 9 because by then it will > have warmed up and all the interesting people will have arrived’. > Nice. Imagine if every

> 'Oh 7.30, but we won’t get there till 9 because by then it will > have warmed up and all the interesting people will have arrived’. > Nice. Imagine if everyone took that view. > Cocktail parties would start at 3 am eventually. Apparently this is exactly what happened to 'dinner' in British parlance, as described by Bill Bryson in his book 'At Home'. 'Dinner' was the midday meal and 'supper' was in the evening, but in the 18th century, people invited to dinner started turning up later and later in the afternoon (for various reasons, including entertaining strangers who had dropped in at their house for an obligatory tour). So dinner eventually became the evening meal, and a new word had to be coined for the midday meal, hence 'luncheon' which eventually became truncated to just 'lunch'. All this was happening in upper-class society, mainly in London, so other regions and usages have retained 'dinner' to mean the midday meal. For example, school meals are often called 'school dinners'; and in many northern counties, calling the midday meal 'lunch' is still considered an effete southern neologism.