FOOD HISTORY: Dinner Once Was Breakfast

In the Neolithic Era (8000 - 6000 BC), which was a great period of innovation, humans began to use querns  (grinding stones) to turn grains into a porridge-like food. Roman soldier 's  soon began consuming it to “break the fast” between the evening meal and the first meal of the next day.  The Latin word for that early morning meal was “disiunare” from the Latin root “dis” meaning reversal, and “iunare” meaning fast: together, "breakfast".  This word was later shortened to “disnare” or “disnar” and, even later, in old French, to “diner,” which meant, at that time, the first large meal of the day.  Eventually, in medieval England, this word that originated in Latin evolved into the English word "dinner". In England during that time, food writers emphasized that two meals a day should suffice and eating more frequently was considered “beastly.” People were expected to have a sizeable meal in the morning (dinner) and then have a smaller meal in the evening. Eventually, however, intermediate smaller meals became customary, and the larger meal was eaten much later in the day. Thus, the word "dinner", originally meaning "reversing the fast", is now used to indicate the last largest meal of the day while the word "breakfast" has come to be known as the first meal of the day.