Other forms: spamming
Spam is unwanted junk messages sent to thousands of inboxes at once. Spam email, block spam, a spam filter.
It is unsolicited and sent in bulk, and those two things together are what define it. Spam filters now catch the great majority, which is why the volume is invisible rather than gone — most email sent is still spam. The word comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the word is repeated until nothing else can be heard, which is exactly the experience being named.
1nounspamUnwanted junk messages sent in bulk.
“My inbox is full of spam offering cheap watches and miracle pills.”
2verbsendTo send such messages, or to repeat something endlessly.
“The company spammed everyone on its list with daily adverts until people complained.”
spam is unwanted bulk messaging.
Also accepted in games: junk mail
Spam was a canned meat trademark registered in 1937. The internet sense comes from a Monty Python sketch where the word is chanted over everything else, and early users applied it to messages that drowned out conversation.
The original sense (canned ham) is a proprietary name registered by Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in U.S., 1937. It is presumed to be a conflation of either "spiced ham" or "shoulder of pork and ham" but was soon extended to other kinds of canned meat. Hormel spells the trademarked name in all upper case. The use for unsolicited and unwanted email derives from a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch. In the 1970 sketch, a group of Vikings in a restaurant repeatedly chant the word "spam". The earliest recorded real-life use for this sense occurs around 1993 which finds reference in a newsgroup post dated March 31, 1993, but the term may have been in use on "Multi-User Dungeons" (MUDs) in the 1980s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Technology & Internet