Tiffin
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| Part of the Meals series |
| Common meals |
| Breakfast • Brunch • Lunch Tea • Dinner • Supper |
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| Appetizer • Entrée • Main course Side dish • Drink • Dessert |
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| Food • Eating • Cuisine Etiquette • Buffet • Banquet |
Tiffin is lunch, or any light meal. It originated in British India, and is today found primarily in Indian English.[1] The word originated when Indian custom superseded the British practice of an afternoon dinner, leading to a new word for the afternoon meal.[1] It is derived from the obsolete English slang tiffing, for "taking a little drink or sip".[2] When used for "lunch"; it is not necessarily a light meal.[3]:88 Notably, it is used in the name of Mavalli Tiffin Room.
In South India and in Nepal, the term is generally used for between-meals snacks: dosas, idlis, etc.[4] Outside South India, like Mumbai, the word mostly refers to any packed lunch, often light lunches prepared for working Indian men by their wives after they have left for work, or for schoolchildren by their parents.[5] 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.[6]
Tiffin often consists of rice, dal, curry, vegetables, chapathis or "spicy meats".[3]
In addition, the lunch boxes are themselves called tiffin carriers, tiffin-boxes or sometimes tiffins.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Michael Quinion, World Wide Words: TIFFIN
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, tiffin
- ^ a b Sarah Murray (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 9780312428143, http://books.google.com/books?id=HqcwO2JfNsAC&pg=PA85
- ^ Martin Hughes; Sheema Mookherjee; Richard Delacy (2001), India (illustrated ed.), Lonely Planet, p. 25, ISBN 9781864503289, http://books.google.com/books?id=XWXGIQG5fMMC&pg=PA25
- ^ A Bombay lunchbox
- ^ Mumbai's amazing dabbawalas, Archived from the original on 2008-02-09, http://web.archive.org/web/20080209025804/http://www.sixsigmainstitute.com/news/sixsigma/2005/11/mumbais-amazing-dabbawalas.html
[edit] External links
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Look up tiffin in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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