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nondescript meal

mrxkms

Senior Member
Arabic
Hello dear experts
Would you please help me understand the following extract?
Actually, there is no specific question about a word or grammar case. The whole text is confusing me, so I couldnt get to the point

"Really it is a sort of dinner, a nondescript meal best conveyed to the mind by that equally nondescript English phrase, “high tea”—a strange meal indulged in by people who are too hungry to have tea, and too modest to have a second dinner."

Source
My Japanese wife By Clive Holland


Many thanks

Attachments

Are there any English words that you don't understand in that quote? The tea the author is describing is as nondescript as what some Engish people call high tea.
Are there any English words that you don't understand in that quote? The tea the author is describing is as nondescript as what some Engish people call high tea.

I can understand every single word in this text, but I cant put them all together to get what the writer wants to say to the reader.
a strange meal indulged in by people who are too hungry to have tea, and too modest to have a second dinner."
What does this part mean?
someone might be too modest to have a second dinner is not explained. From the WRF entry for modest
showing regard for the decencies of behavior, dress, etc.:She was too modest to wear a revealing swimsuit in public.
If so, let me ask about the word "modest" in "modest to have a second dinner"
Dinner (whenever eaten) is the main meal of the day. To eat it twice seems over-indulgent, greedy or pompous. Modest people wouldn't want to appear that way. But they might secretly very greedy, so they re-name the second dinner as "high tea".

(That's my interpretation of the yellow text, not my understanding of "high tea".)
a strange meal indulged in by people who are too hungry to have tea, and too modest to have a second dinner."
The author defines "high tea" as a meal that includes more than just drinking tea but less than a full dinner, which generally includes some vegetables, some kind of protein and maybe a dessert. A high tea meal is not common, hence the word "strange".
The issue of how common high tea is was covered (at least) in this thread
Meals: Supper, breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner.
There is wide variation amongst BE speakers as to when it is and when it happens. It is quite possible that Clive Holland, a pen name for a British author, was not familiar with its popularity outside his circle and had little direct experience with it, and so though it "strange". (Despite what some Americans think, it is definitely not the same as "afternoon tea" - scones, doiuble or clotted cream, strawberry jam, thin sandwiches, little cakes etc).
It's hard to understand without knowing more of the context.

I see that the previous sentence is Then we have tea.
So the "it" in the first sentence refers to the meal that they call tea. The writer seems to be saying that it's neither one thing nor another: neither a light 'tea' nor a heavier 'dinner.'

He appears to be using "nondescript" to mean the first of these two definitions:
WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2024
non•de•script (non′di skript′),adj.
  1. of no recognized, definite, or particular type or kind: a nondescript novel; a nondescript color.
  2. undistinguished or uninteresting;
    dull or insipid: The private detective deliberately wore nondescript clothes.
I tend to use it to mean the second, myself.
"Really it is a sort of dinner, "It" = what I have just described
which (=it) is a nondescript meal
the idea of which
is best conveyed to the mind = can be best described
by using that equally nondescript English phrase, “high tea”
and that (=high tea) is a strange meal
that is indulged in by people who are too hungry to have tea (a meal),
and too modest" = and would be too embarrassed
to have (=eat) a second dinner.
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