Dinner usually refers to the most significant and important meal of the day, which can be the noon or the evening meal. It may mean a meal of any size eaten at any time of day.
The meaning as the evening meal, generally the largest of the day. A dinner party is a social gathering at which people congregate to eat dinner. During the times of Ancient Rome, a dinner party was referred to as a convivia, and was a significant event for Roman emperors and senators to congregate and discuss their relations. The Romans often ate and were also very fond of fish sauce called liquamen (also known as Garum) during said parties. In greater London, England, dinner parties were sometimes formal occasions that included printed invitations and formal RSVPs. The food served at these parties ranged from large, extravagant food displays and several meal courses to more simple fare and food service. Activities sometimes included singing and poetry reciting, among others.
Even in systems in which dinner is the meal usually eaten at the end of the day, an individual dinner may still refer to a main or more sophisticated meal at any time in the day
You can use a banquet, feast, or a special meal eaten on a Sunday or holiday, such as Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner in some countries. At such a dinner the people who dine together may be formally dressed and consume food with an array of utensils. These dinners are often divided into three or more courses. Appetizers consisting of options such as soup, salad etc., precede the main course, which is followed by the dessert.
In Europe, the fashionable hour for dinner began to be incrementally postponed during the 18th century, to two and three in the afternoon, until at the time of the First French Empire an English traveler to Paris remarked upon the “abominable habit of dining as late as seven in the evening”