Entry · catalog no. 6828
tea
/ /tiː/ /TEE
noun · South / Black gay and drag communities · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
The truth — one's own, or somebody else's making the rounds. Spilled, sipped, or served, depending on who is telling it.
“Sit down, I've got tea from the family reunion.”
Origin & Attribution
Black gay and drag communities of the South, where "T" stood for truth — one's own truth or the hidden kind that becomes gossip. One of the earliest print records is The Lady Chablis in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994): her T, her thing, her business. Drag Race carried it mainstream; the source was Black and Southern.
1994
The Lady Chablis in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil — her T, her thing, her business
2009
Drag Race begins carrying it to a mass audience
2016
Fully general as "spill the tea"
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
South / Black gay and drag communities · 1990s
Spoken by
Black gay and drag communities of the South; now general through drag television and social media
$TEAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady32 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
88/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1994
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt — book · 1994
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceHiding My Candy, The Lady Chablis — autobiography · 1997
submitted
See also