Tiffin

Tiffin is an Indian English word for a light midday meal (luncheon),^[1] When used in place of the word "lunch", it does not necessarily mean a light meal.^{[2][lower-alpha 1]}

History

In the British Raj, where the British custom of afternoon tea was supplanted by the local Indian practice of taking a light meal at that hour, it came to be called tiffin.^[4]

Today

Two dabbawalas in Mumbai delivering meals packed in tiffin carriers

In South India and in Nepal, tiffin is generally a snack between meals: dosas, idlis, etc.^[5] In other parts of India, such as Mumbai, the word mostly refers to a packed lunch of some sort.^[6] In Mumbai, it is often forwarded to them by dabbawalas, sometimes known as tiffin wallahs, who use a complex system to get thousands of tiffin-boxes to their destinations.^[7]

Tiffin often consists of rice, dal, curry, vegetables, chapatis or "spicy meats".^[8] In addition, the lunch boxes are themselves called tiffin carriers, tiffin-boxes or just tiffins.

See also

• Bento
• Tiffin (confectionery)

Notes

1. It is derived from English colloquial or slang tiffing meaning to take a little drink, and had by 1867 become naturalised among Anglo-Indians in the north of British India to mean luncheon.^[3]

1. OED staff 2013, "tiffin, n.".
2. Murray 2008, p. 88.
3. OED staff 2013, "tiffin, n."cites H. Wedgwood (1862) "Tiffin, now naturalised among Anglo-Indians in the sense of luncheon, is the North country tiffing (properly sipping)". See also Wedgwood 1872, p. 682.
4. Quinion 2006, Tiffin.
5. Hughes, Mookherjee & Delacy 2001, p. 25.
6. Harding 2002.
7. Thakker 2005.
8. Murray 2008, pp. 85–108.

References

• Harding, Luke (29 October 2002), "A Bombay lunchbox", The Guardian
• Hughes, Martin; Mookherjee, Sheema; Delacy, Richard (2001), India (illustrated ed.), Lonely Planet, p. 25, ISBN 978-1-86450-328-9
• Murray, Sarah (2008), Moveable Feasts: From Ancient Rome to the 21st Century, the Incredible Journeys of the Food We Eat (illustrated ed.), Macmillan, pp. 85–108, ISBN 978-0-312-42814-3
• OED staff (2013), "tiffin, n.", Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.), Oxford University
• [[Michael Quinion|Quinion, [Michael]] (2 September 2006) [2003], World Wide Words: Tiffin, worldwidewords.org, retrieved March 2015 Check date values in: |access-date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
• Thakker, Pradip (11 November 2005), Bombay's amazing dabbawalas, archived from the original on 9 February 2008
• Wedgwood, H. (1872), A Dictionary of English Etymology (second ed.), p. 682