Dictionary Definition
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
Anglo-IndianExtensive Definition
In South India, especially in
Andhra
Pradesh and Tamil Nadu,
and in Nepal,
the term Tiffin is generally used to mean an in-between-meals
snack. Most road-side restaurants in Tamil Nadu will have a board
displaying 'Tiffin Ready'. It is customary to be offered a 'Tiffin'
as a courtesy when you visit an Andhra or Tamil
residence. The word is basically a part of Indian English and hence
not very much in use outside the country. Outside South India, like
Mumbai, the
word is mostly used for light lunches prepared for working Indian
men by their wives after they have left for work, and forwarded to
them by Dabbawalas who
use a complex system to get thousands of tiffin-boxes
to their destinations. The lunches are packed in stainless steel or
tin boxes with carry handles, also sometimes called tiffins or
tiffin-boxes. A common approach is to put rice in one box, dal in another and yet other items
in the third or fourth. The other items could be breads, such as naan, vegetable curry and finally a sweet. This
system delivers thousands of meals a day and does not use any
documents as many Dabbawalas are
illiterate. It has been claimed that the tiffin delivery system of
Mumbai is so efficient that there is only one mistake for every
million deliverieshttp://www.sixsigmainstitute.com/news/sixsigma/2005/11/mumbais-amazing-dabbawalas.html.
Another modern usage of the word also applies to lunches that may
be packed by parents for
children attending
school, to provide a
lunch during the school
day if the student eats
lunch at school.
In some former British colonies, the stacked
porcelain or metal round trays with handles are
called tiffin carriers (similar to the dabba transported by a
Dabbawala
/ Tiffin
Wallah), and small-scale caterers use them for delivering meals
to individual homes.
External links
tiffin in Macedonian: Тифин