citizenjournal

Dinner is, for most English speakers, the main meal of the day. When the word was first used (in the 12^th century) it referred to a midday meal, but it did not remain so for long. By the early 16^th century it had become the first meal of the day, what we would call breakfast. No doubt those 16^th century diners had their own reasons for this but it makes perfect sense etymologically as the verb to dine comes from the Late Latin disjejunare, “to breakfast” via the Old French disner. The Latin word disjejunare, incidentally, is quite literally “break fast”, being dis (“undo”) + jejunare (“to fast”) and also gave the French word déjeuner “breakfast”*. Obviously, dinner could not get any earlier than breakfast and after the 16^th century it drifted through the day, being served later and later until, during the Victorian era, high society sat down to dinner at 10 p.m. Having one’s main meal of the day at such a late hour meant that many tummies were growling by late afternoon. To avoid that unpleasant hollow feeling, a new meal was invented. It was just a light snack, basically a few cakes and pastries served with the expensive new status symbol, tea. Consequently, the meal was called “tea”.

A slightly different English Corner this time, where we look at a type of name rather than a specific phrase. The Periodic Table, or table of elements, is a chart that organizes all known chemical elements by their atomic number, with rows called periods and columns called groups. This arrangement is based on the number…