THE CAT'S PAJAMAS LII

Tad Tuleja

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

SPILL THE BEANS

 

This expression, meaning to reveal a secret prematurely, goes back to the 1500s. In the ancient Middle East before the invention of parchment, messages that had to be carried long distances were often inscribed on approximately cylindrical clay pellets. To protect these messages from spies, the senders would sometimes make the pellets extremely small and hide them within sacks of grain or beans. The Hittites were particularly fond of this concealment method, and were so good at it that some authorities have suggested that their long hegemony over Middle Eastern politics was due chiefly to the expertise of their ceramicists. But eventually the Hittite ruse was discovered, and it became common for intercepted couriers to be forced to dump food sacks on the ground, so that the interceptors could inspect the contents. This was known in Hittite as nch-labatab, which translates impressively into "suffering the indignity of revealing the secret heart of legumes to the enemy." It has come down to us, more succinctly, as spilling the beans.