“Spill the tea" is really interesting as a phrase that means something like “give me all the tidbits of good gossip.”

As a gay man in my late 50s, I have been hearing and using that phrase for decades. While it’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity now, I actually associate it with people older than me.

It evidently originated in Black drag Ball Culture of the 1950s, though citations are hard to come by. Black gay men use it a lot in my experience, just like they use Child or Chile.

But both expressions, and particularly “spill the tea," crossed over into pretty mainstream white gay male usage by at least the 1980s. “Spill the tea" is interesting because of the gay “tea dance" tradition, which is usually a daytime event on a Saturday or Sunday in which the tea is actually cocktails.

So older gay men will often say “spill the tea" to mean gossip, from the association of all the gossiping thought to go on at tea dances.

So “spill the tea" has taken on a sort of folk etymology in which people believe they know the origin of a word or phrase but are actually partially or completely mistaken.

Still, linguistics and etymology are complex. It’s possible that while the phrase did not originate with tea dances, the mistaken association with tea dances strengthened it.

But whatever the case, it sort of amuses me that an expression I experience as popular among older gay men is coming into vogue again.

And “vogue” brings us right back around to ball culture. Lol