No doubt many guests have arrived for a Sunday dinner much earlier or later than the host intended thanks to the ambiguous nature of the word dinner, a guest might understand dinner to be the meal eaten at noon (followed hours later by supper); a host might understand dinner to be the meal eaten at six o’clock or so (having been preceded at noon by lunch). Looking to the origin of the word for clarification does not help, since dinner literally means breakfast: it derives ultimately from the Vulgar Latin disjunare, formed by compounding dis, a prefix meaning not, and jejunum, meaning a fast or a hungry period. The Vulgar Latin disjunare therefore means to stop being hungry or to break a fast, specifically the fast undertaken when we fall asleep for eight hours every night. The Vulgar Latin disjunare entered Old French as two words: first as desiuner, the name of a morning meal that developed into the Modern French word dejeuner, somewhat later, the Vulgar Latin disjunare also became the Old French disner, meaning to dine, which became the Modern French word diner. It was this Old French word, disner, which gave rise to the English dine and dinner, although by the time English developed these words, in the late thirteenth century, the meal they denoted had shifted from early morning to midday. The Latin jejunium also happens to be the source of the word jejune: when jejune entered English in the early seventeenth century, it meant hungry or fasting, but by the mid seventeenth century it had come to mean something insipid, something that provides no “mental nourishment.”
The principal sustenance of the diurnal period, whether at noon or twilight.
The term “dinner” typically refers to the primary evening meal. However, if consumed during midday hours, it may be alternatively referred to as “lunch” or “luncheon.” The typical format for a formal dinner comprises of soup or an appetizer, such as melon, grapefruit, shrimp cocktail, paté, and so on, followed by a main course with accompanying vegetable sides, salad, and dessert, which can be either hot or cold. For simpler family dinners, only two courses may be served.