A fabulous story, or spilling etymological beans

For a long time, I have been trying to learn something about the source of the idiom to spill the beans “to divulge a secret” but discovered nothing. Though the Internet is full of vague suggestions, no one knows the origin of this phrase (which, incidentally, is a fairly common case with idioms). As just indicated, neither do I. Yet at the end of this essay, a rather disappointing hypothesis will be offered, and in the absence of more substantive ideas I thought it might be reasonable to touch on the origin of bean, a word that perhaps presents more interest than the evasive idiom.

The great sixth-century scholar Isidore of Seville was the author of a book titled Etymologiae, that is, “Etymologies,” one of the most famous works written in the Middle Ages. After Isidore, etymology as a branch of linguistics had to wait for more than a thousand years before turning into some semblance of science. However, we read ancient and medieval theories of word origins, from Plato on, with interest, because the tortuous history of human thought is not less instructive than the achievements of our time and because occasionally old scholars guessed well. In Isidore’s days (as well as before and long after him), learned people derived all words of European languages from Hebrew, Greek, or Latin.

As regards bean, or rather Latin faba, Isidore derived it from Greek phago– “eat(ing).” English speakers know phago– from the compounds sarcophagus and esophagus. Isidore’s idea outlived him by many centuries. Yet it inspires little confidence. Significant is only his comment: “Because beans are the first vegetables for humans.” In this respect, he was certainly right: beans have accompanied people through their entire history. Those who doubt it should read or reread John Steinbeck’s charming story “Tortilla Flat,” as well as the immortal fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. Finally, pay attention to the Latin name Fabius, which means “grower of beans.” One does not get such a name for nothing. By the way, Isidore consumed the beans, today known as Vicia faba, while our variety is called Phaseolus vulgaris and stems from America.

As far as English is concerned, let us first note that the same word for “bean” has been recorded in all the Old Germanic languages (the differences are due only to the vagaries of historical phonetics): Old English bēan, Old High German bōna (the modern form is Bohne), Middle Dutch bone (Modern Dutch boon), and Old Norse baun. Plinius mentioned the Frisian island Baunonia, apparently, “Land of beans.” The Common Germanic form must have sounded baun-.

Why, centuries and centuries ago, did people call this vegetable baun-? Similar forms have been recorded all over the place. For instance, the Slavic word for “bean” is somewhat like the Germanic one, namely bob. It has been suggested that bob is a sound-imitative word (like English phut or pooh–pooh). Presumably, beans split with some noise. In the Grimms’ tale “Straw, Coal, and Bean,” the bean splits with laughter at seeing its companions perish. Why this event tickled the bean to death is a special subject, but we may assume that some noise did accompany the splitting. Anyway, a tailor who happened to be close by sowed the patient together (hence, we are told, to this day, a black seam appears in the middle of all beans).

Bob (the Slavic form) may have gone back to some form like bha-bh(a). Monosyllables beginning with and ending in the same stop, such as dud, tut, gig, tut, kick, pop (and bob!) do look like onomatopoeic creations. But Germanic baun– is unlike the Slavic word bob– in that it lacks the second b. Attempts to reconstruct some ancient Indo-European protoform like babn-o, with the loss of the second b in Germanic, are among the many sterile exercises plaguing etymological algebra. Conversely, initial f in Latin and initial b in Germanic are a regular match: both go to the consonant b^h.

Rather probably, the two forms (baun-, its root being bau-, and bob-) emerged independently, even if the impulse that produced them was similar. Considering the fact that beans were known to Germanic speakers very long ago, one wonders whether the name of the vegetable might be borrowed from some indigenous speakers, that is, from the people who inhabited their land before the Germanic invaders (we may call them newcomers, because we have no evidence testifying to an invasion) and whose language is now lost beyond recovery. Such words taken over from an unknown language are covered by the term substrate. In our case, this guesswork is unproductive, because we have no information about that hypothetical language or about the previous settlers.

Let me finish this part of the essay with a bit of humor. Two phrases have been recorded in British dialects: Bob’s a dying and kick up Bob’s a-dying. Both mean “boisterous merriment; to make a great noise.” No one knows their origin, but it may not be quite fortuitous that the proper name Bob was chosen for the occasion (not Jack, let alone Tom, Dick, or Harry): perhaps it still evokes the idea of ruckus. I am now returning to the proverbial saying. Why do we say to spill the beans? Everything is puzzling about it. The phrase surfaced late: no attestation in print before the beginning of the twentieth century. It looks like an American coinage (in any case, the first examples are from American media). And we don’t know what situation inspired the idiom. Who in real life used to spill beans and thus “leak” precious information? Even the image of beans being spilled is far from clear.

I have no answer to the riddle, but it is curious how often beans appears in idioms. An amusing British regional saying, which was current at least as early as the eighteen-thirties, sounded so: “To know how many beans make five,” that is, to be fully aware of one’s interests (a reference to some forgotten game?), while not to know beans still means “to be ignorant.” “Not to care a bean” is a synonym for “not to care a thing, a fig, a brass farthing” (or “a hill of beans”!), and so forth. To get beans means “to be punished,” to give somebody beans “to beat to a pulp,” and so it goes down to cool beans “great job.” This environment provides no clue to the phrase that interests us, but it shows that beans has long been a favorite element of idiomatic sayings (even more so than nuts). Beans is also ubiquitous in the context of sex. This is surprising, seeing that beans, even though, as noted above, have played an outstanding role in human history, are no longer the most important part of our diet, while all the idioms with beans are or seem to be recent. (Incidentally, when Russian speakers draw blank, they are said to be left on (the) beans. Why? The phrase is ostat’sia na bobakh.)

Perhaps the phrase to spill the beans simply joined many others containing the overused word. Oscar Wilde once wrote a tale titled “Sphinx without a Secret.” The tale is not one of his masterpieces, but the title is brilliant. Isn’t our idiom such a sphinx? You get beans, you give somebody beans, you spill beans. Why bother? I conclude: no need crying over spilled beans.

_{Featured image by Elizabeth Tyler Wolcott, Digital Commonwealth via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.}