
As you might imagine, that leaves a lot of room for deception. The trouble with the term gushu is that there is no standard for what is or is not gushu. Tea trees grow very slowly, so it would take 80-100 years to get anywhere near that size. People have to climb the trees to harvest leaves. Since they are not pruned, the trees get quite tall. These are usually grown from seed in a forest-like setting with minimal human interference.

When a particular tea is labeled as gushu, the company is communicating it was made with leaves from ancient trees. Now, when you’ve got some juicy news to share, it’s time to spill the tea.Gushu is a Chinese word that can be translated to English as ‘ancient tree’. It’s in this iconic show where “tea” (meaning gossip) is used interchangeably with “T” (meaning your personal truth). He also called out someone for lying by saying “weak tea.”īut it was most likely Rupaul’s Drag Race that put the phrase in our daily lexicon. On Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, Larry Wilmore often used it. Chanté, You StayĪfter getting introduced in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the phrase started popping up in different places. Her “T”, or her truth, was that she’s transgender. As people all over America were installing dial-up internet in their homes, the phrase started to spread and take hold.Ĭhablis’ interview in the book introduced the world to black drag culture and vocabulary. Apparently, that was the birth of spilling the tea. My thing, my business, what’s goin’ on in my life,” she said. And she explained how she avoided certain men who got violent when they “find out her T.” In the novel, Berendt interviews prominent drag queen The Lady Chablis about her dating life. One of the earliest known uses of the phrase in pop culture happened in John Berendt’s 1994 best-selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. These gay kids carry on… They give you dance and great tea.

Hawkeswood, a person named “Nate” is quoted as saying “Straight life must be so boring. In 1991’s One of the Children: An Ethnography of Identity and Gay Black Men by William G. Merriam-Webster claimed the phrase actually originated in black drag culture, just like the term “shade.” But this kind of tea doesn’t have anything to do with the herbal beverage. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to prove this. As the story goes, women would sit on their front porches and gossip while drinking tea. But where did this phrase “spill the tea” come from? The ‘Spill The Tea’ Origin StoryĪccording to the first definition published in the Urban Dictionary, the phrase “spill the tea” means “gossip or personal information belonging to someone else the scoop the news.” But why? How did this happen?Ĭhalk Magazine reported the theory that the phrase “spill the tea” goes all the way back to the late 18th century.

When exploring these platforms, you’ll probably find phrases like “Give me the tea” and “Where’s the tea?” You might even see a tweet that features Kermit the Frog sipping a Lipton tea. TikTok and Twitter are fertile tea breeding grounds for exclusive details about everything from major court cases to the latest season of 90 Day Fiancé. There’s not a day that goes by where someone isn’t “spilling the tea” on something. The internet has turned sharing juicy gossip into a sport, and social media has made it a regular part of life.
