Buzz
Despite what die-hard fans of The Office might suggest, the phrase spill the beans wasn’t coined when Kevin Malone dropped his huge pot of chili during season five, episode 26. In reality, the saying has been in circulation for over two millennia.
As stated by Bloomsbury International, an ancient Greek voting system involved the use of raw beans. If you voted yes, you’d place a white bean in the container; if you voted no, you'd choose a black bean. Since the jar was opaque, and the votes were intended to remain anonymous until the end, anyone who accidentally knocked the jar over would be spilling the beans—both literally and revealing the results prematurely.
While we can't say for certain that the expression spill the beans truly dates back to ancient Greece, we do know that the verb spill has meant “to reveal” since at least the 16th century. The earliest known citation in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from a letter written by Spanish historian Antonio de Guevara before his death in 1545 (the word spill also appears in Edward Hellowes’s 1577 translation of the letter).
Writers began pairing spill with beans in the 20th century. The earliest recorded instance appears in Thomas K. Holmes’s 1919 novel The Man From Tall Timber: “‘Mother certainly has spilled the beans!’ thought Stafford with great amusement.”
In essence, it remains unclear why beans were chosen as the metaphor for revealing secrets. Whether you picture the hard, raw beans of ancient Greece or the soft, seasoned ones from Kevin Malone’s disastrous chili, we’ll let you decide.
