Englishspill the beans
Meaning: To reveal a secret.
Example: “Who spilled the beans about the surprise party?”
Other ways to say this
Japanese: 口が滑る (kuchi ga suberu) Literally: The mouth slips- English: let the cat out of the bag
French: Vendre la mèche Literally: To sell the fuse
Origin: A popular story credits ancient Greek voting, where citizens supposedly dropped white or black beans into a jar to vote for or against a proposal in secret, and knocking the jar over before the count was finished would spill the beans and reveal the result early. The story is neat but almost certainly folklore: the English phrase is first recorded only in early-20th-century America, with no documented chain connecting it back to antiquity. "Spill" had already meant to divulge or let a secret out since at least 1577, so "spill the beans" more plausibly grew as a vivid, colorful way of dressing up a verb that was doing that job on its own.
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