Once in Chile

February 12, 2010 4:58 PM

After having close ties with a Chilean family for a long time, I was fascinated with the Chilean tradition called Once (link in Spanish, Google Translation available here), or Eleven in English. The term once, in Chile, is having a light afternoon tea, usually between 4pm and 8pm.

For the family I knew, it was usually bread with jam, coffee or tea, and some biscuits, however, as the wiki link above says, this seems to vary widely to include "candy, Chilean cake, sopaipillas (fried pastry), donuts, ice cream and juice", or even breakfast cereal.

For me, the most interesting part was ... why was this called once, which translates to 11? You don't have it at 11am or 11pm, and for a long time I tried to work out some correlation. Eventually I asked the father of the family, and he told me in the old days in Santiago, it was traditional to have 11 shots of aguardiente in the afternoon, hence the name.

Nothing online backs this up however, some saying it refers to the fact that there are 11 letters in the word aguardiente, with the wiki article linked above giving the explanation that it was to allow gentlemen to hide the fact they were drinking from their wives, or a literal translation of English term Elevenses.

While it seems difficult to believe you could have 11 shots of strong liquor every afternoon and still function normally, it is my favourite (if least likely) explanation.

posted by Admira (8 comments total)

Interesting little ritual... though I wonder if this post would be improved by more links and less personal observation in the initial post.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:18 PM on February 12, 2010

In Peru, milky coffee and bread rolls with jam or with ham and cheese, eaten at tea-time, is called "lonche."
posted by bentley at 5:19 PM on February 12, 2010

I personally prefer my elevenses after 2nd breakfast and before luncheon.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:19 PM on February 12, 2010

I found a paper about the history of Peruvian words in the 19th century. I've only skimmed it, but it says that "once," then eaten at eleven, consisted of "bread, cheese, fruit, olives, and, above all, aguardiente." It says that "once" was done not just in Peru, but also in Colombia and elsewhere in Spanish America. It was meant to be a pre-lunch snack (what Paddington Bear calls "elevenses"). Eventually, "hacer las once" or "tomar las once" came to mean "to take a small refreshment between 11 and 12 or between lunch and dinner." This term is no longer used in Peru but survives in Chile, to mean "afternoon snack" or "afternoon tea."
posted by bentley at 5:33 PM on February 12, 2010

A transliteration of "elevenses" seems by far the most likely explanation to me; as for the transposition of the ritual from morning to afternoon, it seems that English already has the exact parallel in its use of the French word matinée ("morning") to mean an afternoon performance.
posted by kcds at 6:11 PM on February 12, 2010

Perhaps it was at some point traditional to count the twelve hours from sunrise to sunset as one, two, ..., twelve? Then the eleventh hour would be one hour before sunset, or about 5pm on average, which seems about right.
posted by madcaptenor at 6:24 PM on February 12, 2010

It says that "once" was done not just in Peru, but also in Colombia and elsewhere in Spanish America. It was meant to be a pre-lunch snack (what Paddington Bear calls "elevenses").

But wait...Paddington is Peruvian...maybe he introduced the custom, and the word, into England! The aguaradiente would have been left unmentioned, for the sake of child readers; thus the English elevenses is non-alcoholic - indeed, the only non-alcoholic sustenance some English people take. Paddington is, of course, from Darkest Peru, and that is why he was still enjoying a 19th-century custom that had died out in other, better-lighted parts of his homeland.
posted by eatyourcellphone at 6:40 PM on February 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

it's more or less as madcaptenor's comment.

In latin rite catholic lithurgy, the lithurgy of the Hours starts at 6am (the hora prima or first hour, then you have tertia - third, sexta -sixth, nona - ninth), so la once, the eleventh hour, is 5pm. When time was only marked by the church bell, this was the way it was commonly measured.

This derives directly from the ancient Hebraic tradition during the diaspora in the roman empire: the Forum bell used to ring every three hours, and the Rabbis started to hold functions (psalms, hymns and reading from the Torah) at these hours, and that translated directly into Christianity.
posted by _dario at 6:44 PM on February 12, 2010 [2 favorites]