Changing idioms

Yes, it means the same. I think it originated as 'spill the truth'.

It sounds to me like it should make stuff less teresting/exciting and drain the energy out... - a bit like "put a damper on"

I’ve never heard this expression “spill the tea!”, it sounds like a malapropism to me 🤣🤣🤣

I think it's a malapropism. An Irish politician was famous for mixing up sayings- eg "I don’t think it helps people to start throwing white elephants and red herrings at each other."

spill the tea was an answer on The Chase yesterday afternoon.

It was a repeat (there’s a surprise 😳) it’s been around for a while 🤷‍♀️

I’ve never heard that expression before 😄

Just looked this up. Entirely new to me.

"Spill the tea" is slang for sharing gossip, secrets, or the juicy details about a situation.

It originated in black drag culture (specifically in the 1990s) where the letter "T" stood for "Truth."
It quickly evolved into "tea".

​"Straight life must be so boring... These gay kids carry on... They give you dance and great tea. (gossip)"

www.theidioms.com/spill-the-tea/?hl=en-gb

In Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1994) he interviews the iconic Black drag queen Lady Chablis who says she avoids certain men because they can react violently when they find out her "T" (the truth that she is transgender).

By the time RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered in 2009 and "Stan Twitter" blew up in the mid-2010s, the phrase crossed over from Black queer culture into global internet slang.

That’s right, NS.

T means truth. It’s morphed from Spill the T to Spill the tea.

It’s come from drag and trans culture.

In John Berendt’s 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - which is both a very good story and made into a very good film starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey and Jude Law - the real-life character Lady Chablis uses T for truth.

In her autobiography, Hiding the Candy, she writes of ”callin' it out and pourin' the T!" meaning she was speaking the raw, honest truth about her life and the people around her.

Oooh thanks for all the finer details! Love it!

Having said that, I’ll probably stick to “spill the beans” and I always adore hearing malapropisms, so thank you to Farmor15

I think I'll stick to beans. I've never heard of spilling tea either!

Great information. Must look up the film as well!

Never heard of spilling the tea. I did literally spill the tea a few days ago when the mug slipped out of my hand and tea splashed all over the floor. That will remain what spilling the tea means to me.