after tea

[joham]

In 'after tea' in BrE, the 'tea' refers to the small meal served in the afternoon with a cup of tea. But can we use 'after tea' when we want to mean 'after we drank/drink a cup of tea' or 'after we drank/drink some tea'?

 

[Matthew Wai]

I would say "after a cup of tea".

Not a teacher.

 

[joham]

Thank you so much for your help, Mathew.

By the way, I clicked on the 'Thank' and 'Like' links at least five times at different times, but they just wouldn't work.

 

[Matthew Wai]

I just clicked on the "Thank" and "Like" buttons in your above post and they worked properly.
The problem may be at your end.

Not a teacher.

 

[Tdol]

After we had a cup of tea...

 

[emsr2d2]

In 'after tea' in BrE, the 'tea' refers to the small meal served in the afternoon with a cup of tea. But can we use 'after tea' when we want to mean 'after we drank/drink a cup of tea' or 'after we drank/drink some tea'?

Note that "afternoon tea" is a small(ish) meal served in the afternoon with a cup of tea. In some regions of the UK, "tea" is the evening meal. In other regions of the UK, that meal is called "dinner". Speaking very generally, people in different regions have "breakfast, lunch and dinner", "breakfast, lunch and tea" or "breakfast, dinner and tea".

When I was growing up, we had breakfast, lunch and dinner every day except Sunday. On Sundays we had breakfast, Sunday lunch (also called a roast dinner!) and Sunday tea (egg sandwiches, crumpets, tea and cake).

However, just to add to this confusion, at school, the meal eaten at around noon was always called "school dinner", not "school lunch". I have friends from other parts of the UK who called it "school lunch".

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

When I was growing up, we had breakfast, lunch and supper. You can insert tea between the last two.

 

[emsr2d2]

I completely forgot about supper but when I was growing up, that was a small snack people had about an hour before bed. I never had it.