Elevenses
Encyclopedia
In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 and some Commonwealth realms, elevenses is a snack
Snack
A snack is a small portion of food eaten between meals. The food might be snack food—items like potato chips or baby carrots—but could also simply be a smaller amount of any food item.-Snacks and health:...

 that is similar to afternoon tea
Tea (meal)
Tea can refer to any of several different meals or mealtimes, depending on a country's customs and its history of drinking tea. However, in those countries where the term's use is common, the influences are generally those of the former British Empire...

, but eaten in the morning. It is generally less savoury
Savoury (small dish)
A savoury is the final course of a traditional British formal meal, following the sweet pudding or dessert course. The savoury is designed to "clear the palate" before the Port is served. It generally consists of salty and plain elements....

 than brunch
Brunch
Brunch is a meal eaten between breakfast and lunch. The word is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch.-Origin of the word:The 1896 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary cites Punch magazine which wrote that the term was coined in Britain in 1895 to describe a Sunday meal for "Saturday-night...

, and might consist of some cake
Cake
Cake is a form of bread or bread-like food. In its modern forms, it is typically a sweet and enriched baked dessert. In its oldest forms, cakes were normally fried breads or cheesecakes, and normally had a disk shape...

 or biscuit
Biscuit
A biscuit is a baked, edible, and commonly flour-based product. The term is used to apply to two distinctly different products in North America and the Commonwealth Nations....

s with a cup of coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

 or tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...

. The name refers to the time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

 of day that it is taken: around 11 am. The term is first attested, in East Anglia, as elevens (1849), elevenses appearing first in the record in 1889. Along with fourses, it seems originally to have been a lower-class usage, but by the middle of the twentieth century was associated with middle class language and culture.

In Australia and New Zealand, elevenses are called morning tea or smoko
Smoko
"Smoko" is a term used in Australian English, New Zealand English and Falkland Islands English for a short, often informal, cigarette break taken during work or military duty, although the term can also be used to describe any short break such as a rest or a coffee/tea break...

(often little lunch, recess or playlunch in primary school). Choice of foods consumed at morning tea vary from cakes, pastries or lamington
Lamington
A lamington is a sponge cake of Australian origin in the shape of a cuboid, coated in a layer of traditionally chocolate icing then desiccated coconut. Lamingtons are sometimes served as two halves with a layer of cream and/or strawberry jam between, and are commonly found in South African and...

s, or biscuits, to just coffee. In the Royal Australian Navy
Royal Australian Navy
The Royal Australian Navy is the naval branch of the Australian Defence Force. Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, the ships and resources of the separate colonial navies were integrated into a national force: the Commonwealth Naval Forces...

 it is commonly referred to as "Morno's".

In the United States, elevenses refers to the antiquated custom of the late-morning whiskey break.

In Sweden elevenses is a tradition mostly associated with elderly people, the Swedish word is "elva-kaffe" meaning "eleven-coffee". It is often served with some kind of cookie but the main focus is on the coffee.

In many Spanish-speaking cultures the term las onces (the elevens in Spanish) is used to describe a similar meal. Among Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

ans, the tradition was known as under the same name, although in modern times, it has shifted in most respects to later in the afternoon, more closely reflecting the pattern of British "tea time".

In literature

For elevenses, Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...

 preferred honey
Honey
Honey is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...

 on bread with condensed milk
Condensed milk
Condensed milk, also known as sweetened condensed milk, is cow's milk from which water has been removed and to which sugar has been added, yielding a very thick, sweet product which when canned can last for years without refrigeration if unopened. The two terms, condensed milk and sweetened...

. Paddington Bear
Paddington Bear
Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He appeared on 13 October 1958 and was subsequently featured in several books, most recently in 2008, written by Michael Bond and first illustrated by Peggy Fortnum....

 often took elevenses at the antique shop on Portobello Road
Portobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, England. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's...

 run by his friend Mr. Gruber.

In the Middle-earth
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....

 universe by J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

 (The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...

), it is a meal eaten by Hobbit
Hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...

s between second breakfast
Second breakfast
Second breakfast is a meal eaten after breakfast, but before lunch. It is traditional in Bavaria, and in Poland. In Bavaria or Poland, special dishes are made exclusively to be eaten during second breakfast. In Vienna and most other parts of Austria the second breakfast is referred to as Jause...

 and luncheon
Luncheon
Luncheon, commonly abbreviated to lunch, is a mid-day meal, and is smaller than dinner.In English-speaking countries during the eighteenth century, lunch was originally called "dinner"— a word still used regularly to mean a noontime meal in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and some parts of England,...

.

The term appears extensively throughout the novel Don't Stop the Carnival, by Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...

, in which various characters gleefully partake of "elevenses" at every opportunity, usually accompanied by alcoholic beverages. The idea also appears in Ballet Shoes
Ballet shoes
Ballet shoes, or ballet slippers, are lightweight shoes designed specifically for ballet dancing. They may be made from soft leather, canvas, or satin, and have flexible, thin soles. Traditionally, women wear pink shoes and men wear white or black shoes...

and other Shoes books by Noel Streatfeild
Noel Streatfeild
Mary Noel Streatfeild OBE , known as Noel Streatfeild, was an author, most famous for her children's books including Ballet Shoes . Several of her novels have been adapted for film or television.-Biography:...

, and in Thursday's Children, Listen to the Nightingale by Rumer Godden
Rumer Godden
Margaret Rumer Godden OBE was an English author of over 60 fiction and nonfiction books written under the name of Rumer Godden. A few of her works were co-written by her sister, Jon Godden, who wrote several novels on her own...

.

Elevenses are also featured in the Daisy Dalrymple, an Honorable Miss, mysteries series set in the period after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

by Carola Dunn.
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