Term I never realised was exclusively Australian:

[deird1]

"morning tea"


Apparently it's only ever heard of in Australia and New Zealand. (Along with "afternoon tea".)

But seriously? The Brits jolly well invented the morning tea break - do they really not use the term? *is baffled*


(For those who are sadly unfamiliar with our wonderful vernacular: morning tea involves snacks of some kind, eaten at about 10am. It doesn't necessarily involve cups of tea.)

Comments

[deird1]

Really? So afternoon tea is some big production involving cucumber sandwiches?

But... it's just snacks in the afternoon...

*whimpers*

[bruttimabuoni]

DW isn't sending me comments, dammit. Ahem. 'Afternoon tea' doesn't absolutely have to be so fancy, but that's what I would understand by it.

Just 'tea' in the afternoon mind you, could be anything from a cup of tea to posh afternoon tea to a full meal at about 5-6 pm. That's a class thing (vs dinner, supper), which is now so convoluted I'm not even going to try to disentangle it. "Come over for tea on Friday" is probably the most complex social invitation you could give an English person.

[deird1]

"Come over for tea on Friday" is probably the most complex social invitation you could give an English person.

Heh, yes. It's bad enough here: one of my American friends used to get terribly frustrated because she'd ask if we wanted tea and all us Aussies would be saying "But... we already ate..."
Eventually, she started offering "hot tea". We understood that, but were pretty clear on the fact that she should have offered "tea or coffee".