spill the beans
Formsspills the beans, spilling the beans, spilled the beans
- 1To reveal a secret or let out information.
The company begged reporters not to spill the beans before the official announcement.
Someone on the committee has been spilling the beans to the press for weeks.
Note
An American idiom of the twentieth century with a tidy origin story that may be folk etymology: ancient Greeks voted with colored beans, and a knocked-over jar gave away the tally. The phrase usually stands complete (somebody spilled the beans), though Tina Brown, writing in 2022, names the secret with of. Spilled and spilt both serve as past forms, and its near twin is let the cat out of the bag.
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Origin
First recorded in 20th-century American English. One possible origin is an Ancient Greek practice of voting with different-colored beans, where spilling the jar would reveal the results too soon: though this might be folk etymology.