Why do we say "Spill the Beans (we’ll also accept “shoot the breeze” and “shoot the bull”)"?

Background:

To “spill the beans” means to reveal a secret (e.g., “Her party was supposed to be a surprise but her husband spilled the beans and she found out” or “When the police questioned the suspect he spilled the beans about where the loot was hidden”).

Some speculation exists that the idea of spilling the beans (and thereby revealing a secret) goes back to ancient Greece. In Athens, each man (voting was restricted to free male citizens) was given two beans – one white, indicating a yes vote, and one black, indicating a no. In what may be one of the world’s first secret ballots, each individual dropped one of the legumes into a jar, carefully concealing which. Once everyone had voted, the beans were counted. The theory goes that occasionally someone would knock over the vessel, spilling the beans and revealing the votes prematurely. (As an aside, this voting method is also sometimes said to be the origin of the term, “bean counter.”)

While this is an interesting tale and it’s certainly plausible, there’s no evidence it led to the phrase in question, however.

Most scholars look to the use of the word “spill” to trace the saying’s rise. Sometime in the 16th century, the verb took on the meaning of “to divulge” or “to let out” (and it’s possible this usage arose from the concept of “spilling blood,” which was commonly employed two centuries earlier). Its first appearance in writing comes from Edward Hellowes, a translator who worked in the court of Queen Elizabeth I of England. In 1574 he released a version of Antonio de Guevara’s Familiar epistles that stated:

Although it be a shame to spill it, I will not leaue to say that which… his friends haue said vnto me.

Although no one knows where the idea of beans being the item spilled came from, the phrase almost certainly arose in America around the turn of the 20th century. Interestingly, at the time, spilling the beans actually meant something more akin to upsetting the applecart – not so much revealing a secret as spoiling an outcome. A 1902 article in the St. Louise Republic recounts the results of a horse race:

Ethylene was 15 to 1 one day and would have won sure had Battiste been up. He was set down by the starter in St. Louis and I had to ride a bad boy. Then we put Battiste up later and got down. Kiley told him to take her back a bit. He did, and in some manner the field ran around and over her so that she was shut in, cut off and lost. So the beans were spilled.

A few years later, however, the phrase was being employed with the same meaning as we assign to it today. From The Van Wert (Ohio) Daily Bulletin, October 1911:

Finally Secretary Fisher, of the President’s cabinet, who had just returned from a trip to Alaska, was called by Governor Stubbs to the front, and proceeded, as one writer says, to ‘spill the beans’.

Although the phrase is in common usage today, a variant has arisen recently – “Spill the tea” – which means to dish juicy gossip.

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