"It's raining cats and dogs" for example makes very little sense and upon hearing it you have to question who said that first, why, and how the hell did it catch on.
Well I am hopefully going to help you out with at least one of these silly sayings.
Spill The Beans
Back in Med-evil times messengers were given a tin to guard with their very lives. It was sealed tight, and could only be opened by the little fidgity key that was hidden somewhere on the messenger. Most likely in their shoe which was smelly from all the running that they did, so no-one ever wanted to go in to their smelly potato sacks that were their shoes and get the damned key.
Inside the tin were hundreds and sometimes thousands of little beans. Normally a Vicia bean. On each of these beans was written a single word. The messenger would get to his destination would walk up to the King, the Pope or occasionally the Court Jester if he was carrying a joke, and he would reach deep in to his potato sack shoe, unlock the tin and pour out the beans. It would be up to the receiver of the message to arrange it to make sense.
Sometimes this didn't quite work out and mistakes would happen, that's why there was The Battle Of Hastings, The Persian Invasion Of Greece, and The French.
As you can possibly imagine, the messages were sometimes so brain meltingly important that you would come across a Highway-man desperate to find out what secrets you held within your tin. Of course not wanting to go near your filthy feet, and possibly catching the Bad Aids in the process, he would order you to open the tin of wordy beans and spread them for all to see and try and work out the code. That is an awfully long sentence and not all that threatening so they would just scream in a shrill voice
SPILL THE BEANS
So there you go. I hope you have learned something today.
And remember when some asks you to spill the beans they are threatening you, and you are legally allowed to defend yourself by rubbing your feet on them.
The more you know.
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