No wonder I'm still completely confused by English meals, even after all those years!
Breakfast and lunch I get, but after that it becomes an incomprehensible mess of dinner, supper, tea, which sometimes means the same thing but not always (and that's leaving out the odd elevenses or smoko's), and now it turns out you even eat breakfast for dinner!
Although I must admit I've always been amazed by the English eating a full dinner for breakfast so far...
When men were able to get home for their mid-day meal (usually working class men) and if their wives/mothers were stay-at-home mothers, then that meal was the main one of the day and called "dinner". Middle class people would have a lighter meal and call it "lunch" - very often the breadwinner would not go home for that meal.
Breakfast was always a meal that could keep a person going for hours but the "full-English" or "full Ulster" was not available to folk with less money available, or with less access to food. Otherwise that meal would be something like porridge - that meal needed to have plenty of energy for a working man to keep going on.
When the breadwinner came home for a main meal after work, then IT was called dinner. In the houses that had dinner after a day's work, supper would be something light before bed. In higher class homes the meal was eaten later in the evening so those houses would have TEA (a cup of tea with something very light - scone, cake, biscuit) to keep them going until "supper" which was the main meal for them and so, a large meal. Tea as a meal was invented by some aristocratic lady who felt hungry during the afternoon but had to wait until evening for her main meal. "High tea" was a meal, but not a heavy one and so would include things like sandwiches, cakes and maybe something cooked, but not a huge stew or roast. I think, but am not sure, that this was originally a meal for children to share with their mother, or possibly both parents before being put to bed early in the evening - once the meal had gone down a bit.
Elevenses/smoko was a break for workers during the morning (around 11 am, obviously) for visits to the loo, then a cup of something to stoke up the energy and often to have a cigarette before going back to the grind. It all makes sense but why should we stick to those traditions? Why not a dish of sausage, bacon, egg, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, hash browns (or potato cakes/scones) and so on for an evening meal? I couldn't be bothered with putting that together for myself, but if someone else would put it together for me ....