Spill the T vs. Spill the Tea

Debra, who teaches eighth graders in San Antonio, Texas, says some of them use the expression spill the tea meaning “spill the beans” or “share gossip.” The earliest version of this phrase, which appears in print in the early 1990s, was spill the T, in which the letter T stands for truth. The phrase was popularized by the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race, and a similar use of T for truth appears in John Berendt’s 1994 bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This is part of a complete episode.