Talk:midnight snack

RFD discussion: May–October 2023

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midnight snack

Probably SOP Wonderfool69 (talk) 09:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Leaning keep on the basis that I suspect it excludes breakfast. That is, someone who works 4am to noon might wake up around midnight and have something to eat right away. I have worked schedules like that and I always thought of that as my breakfast, not a midnight snack or even a midnight meal. But it's the sort of thing that would be near impossible to cite academically. —Soap— 09:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Leaning delete, as a breakfast can be a snack even in the scenario above, but I could be persuaded otherwise. I'd say that midnight feast is more idiomatic as it's associated with children sneakily eating at night, as @Equinox says in Talk:midnight feast. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Keep, I think this is idiomatic. A midnight snack needn't be at or around midnight, but at any time in the night when waking up to spend a penny. It's more idiomatic than "snack in the early hours" or "snack in the middle of the night". My preferred "midnight snack" is a biscuit or two. DonnanZ (talk) 18:23, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent. I know people who work from midnight to 8am and take their lunch break and eat lunch during those hours, rather than at midday. But I also know people who only wake up at noon and therefore refer to the period from noon to e.g. 3pm as morning. I wouldn't want separate senses for every possible shift in the meaning of every meal- and time- term (e.g., for breakfast, "a meal eaten in the morning upon waking up", "a meal eaten around noon by people who wake up then", "a meal eaten around 8pm by people who wake up then [to work graveyard shifts]", "a meal eaten at midnight by people who wake up then [to go to work at 4am]"). OTOH, we cover this decently well by qualifying breakfast and lunch as merely usually eaten in the morning and around midday. I'm unsure whether that translates into middnight snack being idiomatic, though; in Soap's scenario, I'd think the exclusion of breakfast would be because breakfast is typically counted as a meal and not a snack. And as for snacking at an hour other than exactly 12 o'clock, it's still a mid-night snack like a midday snack doesn't have to be eaten at exactly 12 o'clock, either. Meh. - -sche (discuss) 20:37, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

• Keep and fix the definition. The phrase does not literally refer to a snack at midnight, but any snack late at night. If someone goes to bed at 8:00 PM, and wakes up for a snack at 10:30 PM, that can still be called a "midnight snack". bd2412 T 05:40, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
• Delete, the more I think about it the more I support delete. Did the 'Midnight train to Georgia' leave at exactly 00:00 or was it closer to 23:30 or 00:30? I also agree with most, if not all, of what @-sche said above, though as far as breakfast being a meal not a snack, that begs the question: "What is the difference between a substantial snack and a light meal?". --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  In this kind of situation, isn't the only necessary difference "people call / regard one as a meal and the other a snack"? I.e. people not calling a mightnight breakfast a midnight snack needn't be expected to have any basis like "objectively, it has to include X, Y, and Z to be a meal", just "we don't call breakfast a snack"? - -sche (discuss) 22:49, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  What I mean by breakfast is the first meal of the day, even if it's very small, like a single granola bar and some coffee. I think this should be kept on the basis that it can't be the first meal of the day, which we usually refer to as breakfast. Someone who stays up late at night and eats before bed can have a midnight snack, and someone who wakes up hungry in the middle of the night can have a midnight snack, but someone who wakes up very early and eats right away can only have breakfast. However I admit that there are very few people with such an early sleep schedule and some of them might prefer to call their wake-up meal a midnight snack, defying my thinking, if they eat a larger meal later that they prefer to call breakfast. Oh well. I think my logic is sound but I still hold back from typing out a proper boldfaced keep vote since what Im saying applies to a rare exceptional situation. Thanks, —Soap— 10:39, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep , not literal. – Jberkel 13:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

• Keep I would consider a 3 AM snack to be a midnight snack, but a 9 PM snack to not be a midnight snack. The tendency that a midnight snack is more likely to be eaten after rather than before midnight cannot be inferred from SoP. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:53, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

• Kept per smarter people than Wonderfool P. Sovjunk (talk) 20:17, 20 October 2023 (UTC)