I was always a little confused about these two terms….I always thought they meant the same thing, just used more in different parts of the country.  Did you eat supper or dinner?  It seems the term “supper” has faded out of sight.  Believe it or not, there is actually a difference between supper and dinner.  My Dad’s family is from Ohio and my Mom’s from West Virginia both referred to it as dinner, while my better half’s family is from Florida and Georgia referred to it as supper. This comparison would say that supper is a Southern term and dinner a bit Northern, BUT that’s not the case. Starting right at the beginning and solve the question of the dinner/supper conundrum.

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Dinner does not imply a time of day and simply references the main meal, or the largest meal, of the day. You can eat dinner at any time, and since there is no time implied, dinner has become the term for the evening meal.  This influences how we use the word dinner and it has become the most popular word for the largest meal eaten of the day.

Supper supposedly comes from the specific Old French word souper, which means the evening meal in the English language. The time of day is explicitly stated, it is related to the late afternoon or early evening meal. Supper is most often a light meal.  In some rural parts of the country in the 1800s, dinner actually meant the midday meal (lunchtime) and supper referred to the evening meal of dinner.

It’s not a Southern or Midwestern tradition, but instead is a farming families’ trademark. The Southern and Midwestern states were agricultural, supper was the lighter, late evening meal and dinner was the larger, main meal of the day.