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Originally and chiefly U.S., the slang phrase to spill one’s guts (out) means: to reveal the truth about something secret or private.
This phrase occurs, for example, in How therapy helped singer Kelsea Ballerini, by Jon Bream, published in The Daily Herald (Everett, Washington, USA) of Thursday 30th January 2025 [page B1, column 1]:
Minneapolis—Country star Kelsea Ballerini knows therapy. Not just the kind that comes with spilling your guts out with songwriting. But those go-to-the-shrink confabs, as well.
—Note: Although to spill one’s guts (out) is chiefly a U.S. phrase, Sidney John Baker (1912-1976) recorded it as follows in The Australian Language (Sydney and London: Angus and Robertson Ltd., 1945) [chapter 7: The Underworld, page 140]:
Here are some general underworld terms worth noting: […] to hold one’s guts, to be silent, and to spill one’s guts, to talk, reveal a secret.
However, the phrase to spill one’s guts (out) does not seem to be often used in Australian English.
But Sidney John Baker was right in associating this phrase with the underworld, since the earliest occurrences of to spill one’s guts (out) that I have found indicate that it originated in U.S. criminals’ slang—these early occurrences are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From Six Men Involved by Confession in Conspiracy to Burn Store, published in the Los Angeles Express (Los Angeles, California, USA) of Wednesday 15th December 1915 [page 1, column 1]:
Crowe’s alleged confession, made to Fire Chief Eley, Arthur Keetch, deputy district attorney, and others, is said to have been made following a three-hours’ grilling, after which he said he would “spill his guts” because he did not want to be made the “goat.”
2-: From an account of a court case, published in the Muncie Evening Press (Muncie, Indiana, USA) of Friday 22nd June 1917 [page 1, column 2]:
On the way from Redkey to Dunkirk in a traction car, Fishback is alleged to have made the remark to another witness that he expected to be arrested and to another witness in Dunkirk on the same occasion is alleged to have said, “Joe (meaning his brother) will kill Kile Hale for ‘spilling his guts’”—that is telling all he knew.
3-: From an account of a shooting, published in The Great Falls Leader (Great Falls, Montana, USA) of Thursday 12th July 1917 [page 7, column 4]:
Firing eight shots at almost point blank range, Grace Vale, a crimson woman, attempted to kill Robert (“Red”) Clinton, saloon man, at noon today, in the office of Attorney W. F. O’Leary in the Conrad Bank building.
[…]
In her cell in the city jail this afternoon she said […].
“I’m not going to spill my guts until it counts; but when I do, there’s something going to be doing,” she said, talking in the vernacular of her kind. “I know a lot, and believe me I’m going to tell it.”
4-: From Workman Gives Away Secrets, published in The Marion Chronicle (Marion, Indiana, USA) of Thursday 19th February 1920 [page 10, column 3]:
Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 19.—Soon after one of the workmen in the William J. Oliver Manufacturing plant admitted to a government inspector that he had placed lead discs in the base cover of several steel shells, Colonel Oliver, president of the company, cursed the man and told the foreman to “take that man off the machine and put some one who won’t spill his guts,” according to Leonard Booth, the foreman, testifying in the fraud, sabotage and conspiracy case here today.
5-: From an account of a court case, published in the Fremont Daily Messenger (Fremont, Ohio, USA) of Friday 30th January 1920 [page 1, column 4]:
Charles Parker, convicted of burglary and larceny, brought from the Ohio penitentiary as a witness was put on by the state to testify to admissions made by Corsello.
“Corsello said he had given Sam $500 to keep his mouth shut. That there was $2000 owed to this girl by two of them. That Sam had spilled his guts.”
6 [?]-: From the column Just Our Own Little Comment, published in The Devils Lake World (Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA) of Wednesday 27th April 1921 [page 2, column 3]—however, what this paragraph, and what the phrase to spill one’s guts, refer to is unclear:
“Tell ’Em Sausage.”
Listen: Dern that ’ere C. H. Conaway of Starkweather, we like the poor I. V. A. simpleton. You know we published what he wrote about us last week and he was good. He spilled his own “guts” and then shot this at us, “You tell ’em sausage, you’ve got the guts.” ’s alrite.
7-: From The Glen Campbell News (Glen Campbell, Pennsylvania, USA) of Wednesday 11th May 1921 [page 2, column 1]:
Word has just reached our sanctum of a recent visit to the county seat by a committee of local would-be reformers […]. This committee made every effort to besmirch the good name of this law-abiding community […]
[…]
[…] Inasmuch as the members of the committee should be sufficiently acquainted with the laws of the Borough, we are at loss to understand just what they thought to accomplish by going to the county seat to spill their guts, when [t]he machinery to deal with their complaints has been organized and operating in the borough.
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