Mysterious Lunch

Lunch is full of mystery, indeed. Some people think it comes from an old Spanish word lonje, a piece of ham. Many others suppose that it comes from a dialect form of the word lump, a piece of bread, which was distorted into lunch. Such things happened in the English language: we have lunch from hump, bunch from bump. Why not lunch from lump? Anyway, nobody is sure whether the word lunch comes from ham or bread (or may be both, in a ham sandwich?). At least, one thing is clear: lunch meant a piece of something to eat.

It is not surprising that people often have a light lunch, rather a bite of sandwich or a snack of bread and cheese with a glass of beer in a pub. Though it may be something more substantial at a restaurant or a canteen.

Breakfast and Dinner Are the Same? Well, I Never!

Breakfast and dinner mean nearly the same: to stop not eating, to stop being hungry. Breakfast is an Anglo-Saxon word, and it is made up of two parts: break and fast. Fast in its old meaning in the word breakfast meant “to be firm in your determination not to eat”. The early Christians thought you should not eat in the morning before church services, you should “fast”. After the service you were allowed to break your fast, so you could take “breakfast”.

The word dinner comes into English from Latin through French. In Middle English it had the spelling: dinere, which is a changed from of Old French disner from Latin disjejunare. The Latin word has two parts: dis-, away, and jejunus, hungry; so it means “away from being hungry”, to break one’s fast.

Snack and Bite Are a Pair? No Wonder

Snack and bite are a pair because they mean the same. Snack comes from Middle Dutch snacken, which means to snap or to bite, as you say it of a dog. Bite was bitan in Old English and meant “to use one’s teeth to cut a piece of smth”, “to snap”. Actually both words meant the same. Later they developed the meaning: “to bite something to eat”. Nowadays they both mean “a light, quick meal”.

A Drink for Supper!

The word supper was borrowed from the French. There is a supposition that supper comes from sup, which originates from an Indo-European base relating to drinking. Supper is the name of a meal taken at the end of the day. In old times when people had little heat in their houses they used to have a hot drink before going to bed. That was supper, so first supper meant “to drink” at bed-time, later it began to refer to the last meal of the day.

Breakfast at 5 A.M.? You Are Kidding!

It is really true that understanding British meals is one of the great mysteries for the foreign visitor. Over the centuries, the British not only named and re-named their meals, but they also moved them about the day in a strange way.

Long time ago Englishmen took their breakfast at 5 o’clock in the morning. Rather early, isn’t it? But then they had to start work early. Now breakfast is a meal that is taken at any time before 11.30. In Norman times, in the 12^th century, dinner was a meal taken at 9 a.m. By the 15^th century it had moved to 11 a.m. Today it has changed the time and the name as well. It can be eaten at any time between noon and 2.30 in the afternoon and is called lunch by a large proportion of the population of Britain.

Supper was at 4 o’clock in the 14^th century, now it is teatime. And it is here that we have a complete confusion. Some English working families have tea or high tea at about 6 in the evening, while the rest of their countrymen have dinner, which is often called supper, at about 7.30 p.m.

#8 How Food Names Came to the English Table

Is There Anything Celtic on the English Menu?

As you know from the introduction the Celts were a native population of the British Isles before Anglo-Saxons settled there. The Celts preserved their language in some parts of Britain, but they did not add many words to the English vocabulary. Those, that are in use now, are mostly place-names: names of regions, towns, rivers. The Celts had a number of similar words to name rivers, like: Exe, Esk, Usk. All of them come from a word meaning water (uisge). Later this word was used to name a strong alcoholic drink made from barley or rye. It was first called “water of life”. The word changed its from and pronunciation, and today at restaurants in the West one can see on the menu among other spirits whisky, a Celtic word formerly meaning water.