Nowadays we call the evening meal "dinner", but in the past the word "supper" was used for it.
And the word “dinner” was used in a different meaning.
What used to be called "dinner"
Linguists have two versions. According to the first, the word "dinner" comes from the word "south" and originally meant a midday meal (at midday the sun is in the south).
And the word “lunch” used to mean not the daytime meal, but the time before and after eating.
According to the second version, put forward by linguist A. A. Kretov, the word “dinner” previously referred to the communal way of life.
During the day, people hunted and gathered, and in the evening they divided the spoils.
One of the meanings of the word "to dine" was "to cut" (according to Dahl's explanatory dictionary). And the word "dinner" denoted the process of sharing food.
