I remember visiting my relatives on a farm in Alberta, CA as a kid, and being confused by the fact that when they said “dinner”, they meant “lunch”. The evening meal was only referred to as “supper”.
Within many Islamist traditions, such as for Ramadan, fasting was stopped at sunset on the appropriate day, so dinner meaning break fast is not that unusual of a concept. Historically, it looks like dinner refers to the main (largest) meal of the day, which it would be during a time of fasting - even though the word dinner does seem to have European origins…
I’m going to need some evidence of this because all the main dictionaries (Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster) don’t show that as an origin story. It is the main meal of the day in the evening or mid-day but definitely not breakfast.
The Etymology in Wikipedia does hint to it originally mean to break-fast but it shows zero references for it so it cannot be confirmed.
Google’s AI Overview (to a search on “what is the origin of the word dinner”) says:
The word “dinner” comes from the Old French word disner, which means “to dine”. Disner comes from the Gallo-Romance word desjunare, which means “to break one’s fast”.
Etymology:
Desjunare comes from the Latin words dis-, which means “the opposite of an action”, and ieiunare, which means “to fast” Ieiunus is a Latin word that means
I remember visiting my relatives on a farm in Alberta, CA as a kid, and being confused by the fact that when they said “dinner”, they meant “lunch”. The evening meal was only referred to as “supper”.
Within many Islamist traditions, such as for Ramadan, fasting was stopped at sunset on the appropriate day, so dinner meaning break fast is not that unusual of a concept. Historically, it looks like dinner refers to the main (largest) meal of the day, which it would be during a time of fasting - even though the word dinner does seem to have European origins…
I’m going to need some evidence of this because all the main dictionaries (Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster) don’t show that as an origin story. It is the main meal of the day in the evening or mid-day but definitely not breakfast.
The Etymology in Wikipedia does hint to it originally mean to break-fast but it shows zero references for it so it cannot be confirmed.
Google’s AI Overview (to a search on “what is the origin of the word dinner”) says: