meal names

[gfish]

We have a lot of meal names. Breakfast, lunch, tea, supper, dinner, plus combinations like brunch and linner. But those only cover about a 15 hour period of the day. Everything else is just 'late night snack'. As a native speaker of English, and thus as authorized as anyone else to muck with the language, I am officially accepting suggestions on new meal terminology to help fix this.

Requirements:

• A careful distinction between situations like 'a dinner that is unusually late because you were too busy earlier in the evening' and 'a second dinner around 2 or 3 because you've been up that late'


• The ability to tag meals as being relative to your biological clock. This doesn't apply to everyone, but the first meal I eat is always breakfast. No matter how late I get up, it needs to be breakfast food or I find the whole thing slightly nauseating. (Exception: cold pizza.)


• The terms need to be combinable in the fashion of 'brunch' to indicate, for instance, a meal somewhere between 'greasy diner food after the bar closes' and 'too early for normal breakfast but you've decided you'll eat now and just take a second breakfast later since you'll need to recaffinate around 10 anyway'.
  

Future generations will thank us.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

In the Canadian Forces, we have long had a customary meal called , short for 'midnight rations'; it is basically a combination of luncheon leftovers and supper leftovers. Reheated, rehashed, but nonetheless refreshing if you need to be up and functional at triple nought one.

[maellenkleth]

oopa! it ate the word 'midrats'!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Midrats is fine if it's just a cobbled-together snack. Come down here some time and we'll go to the Night Kitchen. Far, far too good a fare to be called "midrats", open from 1800-0900. I don't know what to call that, "midrats" or "fourthmeal" just doesn't get it. All I know is it's four-star *good*. Comfort food kicked up notches (heretofore) unknown to mankind. Fishy here can vouch for it too.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Breakfast is, by definition, the first meal after waking up.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Or at least the first meal after not eating for more than 8 hours.

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

Taco Bell calls it "fourthmeal".

[mlerules.livejournal.com]

Well, Hobbits have breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and (later in the evening) supper.

IMHO, cold pizza IS breakfast food.

A careful distinction between situations like 'a dinner that is unusually late because you were too busy earlier in the evening' Former = Continental Dinner / Latter = Night Kitchen Nosh.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

nooooo, cold pizza is not food. Cold pizza is what food eats. along with other assorted slops.

(Sorry, had a Bad Experience with cold pizza a long long time ago, and do NOT care to repeat it...)

[solarbird]

Once upon a time, "cocktails" also implied after-dinner food. And b00ze, of course, but also food.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

Like mlerules, I must strongly disagree with your contention that cold pizza isn't breakfast food.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I said cold pizza was the exception to the rule.

[porysski.livejournal.com]

But the rule to which you said it was an exception was "it needs to be breakfast food or I find the whole thing slightly nauseating." My point is that cold pizza can't be an exception to this, because it is the very essence of breakfast food.

Also, actually on topic, I've traditionally called the meal in the 20-30 hours awake range "sleepfood" (usually shortened to "sleep" as in "time to eat something for sleep"), because it's a deliberate tradeoff of sugar and fat for actual rest.