Spill The Tea

Spill the tea means to share gossip, news, or the inside truth. It comes from the broader use of tea, or the letter T, to mean gossip and truth, a usage traced to Black LGBTQ+ communities, particularly drag and ballroom culture. Early print appearances of spill the T, with T standing for truth, date to the early 1990s, and a similar use appears in John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The phrase spread widely through RuPaul's Drag Race and queer social media before entering mainstream slang. Because of its specific cultural roots, some speakers note that its origins in Black queer and trans spaces are worth acknowledging.