/ miːl; NAmE / noun
1.
[ C ] an occasion when people sit down to eat food, especially breakfast, lunch or dinner :
Try not to eat between meals.
Lunch is his main meal of the day.
( especially BrE )
to go out for a meal (= to go to a restaurant to have a meal)
What time would you like your evening meal?
2.
[ C ] the food that is eaten at a meal :
Enjoy your meal.
a three-course meal
3.
[ U ] (often in compounds) grain that has been crushed to produce a powder, used as food for animals and for making flour
—see also bonemeal , oatmeal , wholemeal
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IDIOMS
- make a meal of sth
—more at square adjective
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MORE ABOUT
meals
People use the words dinner , lunch , supper and tea in different ways depending on which English-speaking country they come from. In Britain it may also depend on which part of the country or which social class a person comes from.
A meal eaten in the middle of the day is usually called lunch . If it is the main meal of the day it may also be called dinner in BrE , especially in the north of the country.
A main meal eaten in the evening is usually called dinner , especially if it is a formal meal. Supper is also an evening meal, but more informal than dinner and usually eaten at home. It can also be a late meal or something to eat and drink before going to bed.
In BrE , tea is a light meal in the afternoon with sandwiches, cakes, etc. and a cup of tea:
a cream tea.
It can also be a main meal eaten early in the evening, especially by children:
What time do the kids have their tea?
As a general rule, if dinner is the word someone uses for the meal in the middle of the day, they probably call the meal in the evening tea or supper . If they call the meal in the middle of the day lunch , they probably call the meal in the evening dinner .
Brunch , a combination of breakfast and lunch, is becoming more common, especially as a meal where your guests serve themselves.
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WORD ORIGIN
noun senses 1 to 2 and idsym. Old English mǣl (also in the sense measure , surviving in words such as piecemeal measure taken at one time ), of Germanic origin. The early sense of meal involved a notion of “fixed time”; compare with Dutch maal meal, (portion of) time and German Mal time, Mahl meal, from an Indo-European root meaning to measure.
noun sense 3 Old English melu , meolo , of Germanic origin; related to Dutch meel and German Mehl , from an Indo-European root shared by Latin molere to grind.