I Just Learned Why We Say ‘Spill The Beans’ And I Would Never Have Guessed

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about why we say “o’clock” and “pardon my French.” 

We’ve debunked common misconceptions around why we say “night night, sleep tight” too. 

But “spilling the beans” ― a phrase the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as relating “sometimes questionable or secret information of a personal nature” ― is a mystery to us. 

After all, “spilling the tea,” which has its origins in Black drag culture, refers to the “tee,” “tea,” or “T” of the first letter in “truth”, so that makes sense. 

But what have beans got to do with anything, and why spill them?

It likely goes back to Ancient Greece 

According to the Scholastic Dictionary Of Idioms, it had to do with an old-school voting system. 

In ancient Greece, societies would place either a black or a white bean into a jar. 

Black beans meant “no,” while white beans meant “yes.”

“The beans were supposed to be counted in secret, but if somebody accidentally (or purposefully) knocked over the jar and spilled the beans, the secret vote would be revealed,” the book reads.

Some fraternal clubs still use a black and white ball voting system; that’s why we have the term “blackballed” (per Dictionary.com).

Reader’s Digest says that the Ancient Greek origin may have inspired the use of the phrase in 1900s America, which is how it’s stuck around ’til today.

“He just walked off the reservation, taking enough insurgent Republicans with him to spill the beans for the big five,” a 1908 entry into American publication The Seven Points Journal reads.

This definition, close to meaning “upset the apple cart”, is the same as the current one.

Why are “beans” in so many sayings?

To my disappointment, neither the Greek nor the American origin seems to have anything to do with the disparaging term “bean counter” sometimes used to refer to accountants.

As for using the word “bean” to mean “head” or “brain”, arts and culture publication The Smithsonian says that’s a little harder to track down. 

It’s been traced back to the late 1800s and might have something to do with the fact that beans are a bit brain-shaped (sophisticated).

The Scholastic Dictionary Of Idioms adds that 1200s slang saw “bean” mean “information.”