My grandmother spoke of her mother-in-law, who had run off with the son of a big-house-owning family (who later lost the big house through bad investments) but had been the daughter of an hotelier (which is what he called it, publican is more like it) as pouring tea as though she was trying to get a head on it. Nowadays she would probably call her a chav - the intent was clearly there.

Sorry I omitted the pudding/dessert thing from the list of class divisions which are much older than the current fracas. It goes with the lunch/dinner, dinner/supper thing. People who needed a lot of food midday had their dinner then, and the sweet course needed to be substantial, hence was a pudding, which named the whole course. People with nothing much to do had their dinner in the evening, and thre sweet course would be an unnecessary delicact, so dessert. It wouldn't have become a problem if the Eloi didn't persist in turning the Morlock's terminology into something to be sneered at. It's ironic that that chav test uses the terminology by which those who didn't work sneered at the workers into a sneer at the non-workers, and can't see its own irony.

I wonder what work the authors do. And if it is essential.

Penny