Partial quote:Luncheon, commonly abbreviated to lunch, is a midday meal.[1]
In English-speaking countries during the eighteenth century what was originally called "dinner"— a word still sometimes used to mean a noontime meal in the UK, and in parts of Canada and the United States — was moved by stages later in the day and came in the course of the nineteenth century to be eaten at night, replacing the light meal called supper, which was delayed by the upper class to midnight.
Lunch was originally intended as a vehicle in which working classes could escape their job and purchase (and sometimes consume) alcoholic beverages, a favourite being pear cider.
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."
Origin of the term
The abbreviation lunch, in use from 1823,[1] is taken from the more formal "Lunchentach,"[2] which the OED reports from 1580, as a word for a meal that was inserted between more substantial meals........
