kitchen supper
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From kitchen supper. Original use from kitchen as a synecdoche for a household's servants. Later from the idea that the hosts forgo the dining room for the more private and relaxed kitchen.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (US) IPA(key): /ˈkɪtʃən ˈsʌpɚ/
Audio (Midland US): (file)
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Noun
[edit]kitchen supper (plural kitchen suppers)
- (dated) The evening meal for servants, separate from the family's meal.
- The cook prided herself on making the kitchen supper as delicious as the family's dinner.
- An informal or semiformal meal served for guests, not necessarily one served in the kitchen.
- The couple threw an impromptu kitchen supper when the dinner reservations fell through.
Usage notes
[edit]In contemporary British use, the phrase is seen as snobbish and very U. Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph describes it as "disclosing an assumption – we have a nice dining room but we’ll be all relaxed with our pals and won’t use it – which is perplexingly, excludingly foreign to [a general] audience",[1] while Harry Mount says that "[although] the ingredients of a kitchen supper are universally recognisable [...] the actual expression is confined to the upper-middle classes".[2]
Quotations
[edit]For quotations using this term, see Citations:kitchen supper.