Lunch /

Luncheon, commonly abbreviated to lunch, is a mid-day meal. In English-speaking countries during the eighteenth century, lunch was originally called "dinner"— a word still used regularly to mean a noontime meal in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and some remote parts of England, and also in some parts of Canada and the United States. Typically, businesses will use the standard word "Lunch" when referring to the noon meal to avoid confusion due to the cultural domination of Standard English. The mid-day meal on Sunday and the festival meals on Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving (in the U.S. and Canada) are still often eaten at the old hours, usually either at noon or between two and four in the afternoon, and called dinner. Traditional farming communities also may still commonly have the largest meal of the day at mid-day and refer to this meal as "dinner." The abbreviation lunch, in use from 1823, is taken from the more formal "lunchentach," which the OED reports from 1580, as a word for a meal that was inserted between more substantial meals.