Rawat dined with the chief minister

[learnerAF]

Based on the sentence "Rawat dined with the chief minister," can we assume that Rawat had dinner with the chief minister?

 

[Piscean]

That is what the words tell us.

 

[emsr2d2]

They might have eaten lunch together. Gone are the days when the verb "dine" referred only to "dinner" (the evening meal). It almost certainly doesn't mean breakfast but lunch, dinner, even afternoon tea are possible.

 

[learnerAF]

That is what the words tell us.

My apologies. I should have worded the question better. I wanted to ask whether it is possible to use the term "dine" not only for dinner but also for referring to having lunch or breakfast. I am content with emsr2d2's reply. Thanks.

 

[Tarheel]

It seems rather old-fashioned to me. I would say they ate lunch together or they had dinner together.

 

[Skrej]

Certainly the term 'dine and dash' (to hurriedly leave a restaurant without paying) can apply to any meal.

The term 'dinner' varies regionally (at least in the US) whether it refers to the noon meal or evening meal, because 'supper' is used for the evening meal.

For example, I grew up using 'dinner' for both the mid-day meal and the evening meal. We had breakfast, lunch/dinner, and dinner/supper.

This site attributes it to 'dinner' being the main big meal of the day. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I don't disagree either.

I think all we can say for certain is that Rawat ate a meal (most likely not breakfast) with the chief minister.

 

[learnerAF]

The term 'dinner' varies regionally (at least in the US) whether it refers to the noon meal or evening meal, because 'supper' is used for the evening meal.

Oh, if that's true, it seems like a bit of a linguistic mix-up in American English. It would make more sense to have distinct words for the midday and evening meals. I wonder if you've ever come across a situation where someone uses the word "dinner" but intends to refer to their midday meal. It is undoubtedly confounding for English learners, and I guess it could also be perplexing for the American people from time to time.

By the way, it looks like the website you shared isn't accessible outside of the U.S. I tried accessing it from India, but unfortunately, it didn't work.

 

[emsr2d2]

We've had this discussion about lunch vs dinner vs tea vs supper many times on the forum. There are regional differences even within one country. For example, when I was a child, we had "lunch break" at school (midday meal) but the members of staff who worked in the kitchen and supervised the kids during that time were always called "dinner ladies" (and yes, they were all female in those days). They were never called "lunch ladies". For me, the three meals of the day were breakfast, lunch and dinner. Supper was, in the households that partook, a snack at about 9pm, just to tide you over till breakfast the next day. We didn't have supper in our house. "Tea" was eaten only on Sunday, usually around 4pm or 5pm, and consisted of something like crumpets, a few sandwiches and then, if we were lucky, cake, along with a pot of tea. Even that meal wasn't for every Sunday. We tended to have it only when we had Sunday visitors (grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins etc). The evening meal from Monday to Saturday was never called "tea", but always "dinner".
In short, don't expect much in the way of agreement on the names of the meals.