For some people Spam means that meat stuff in cans that the Monthy Python guys sung about (”Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam”). For most it’s getting the tons of marketed Viagra pill adds crammed in their Inbox. As a female I REALLY don’t need those! There must be so many Spam filters out there keeping the hateful emails out. My account is very good at doing this and when I have been away for as while the Spam folder is filled to the brim with all sorts of nonsense.

To my great amazement (after doing a quick Wiki) I found that the Monthy Python Spam and the Inbox Spam are in fact one and the same, as the term Spam is derived from that particular sketch and the Spam meat. I had never given it any thought before, but this Spam business is language in the making for you.

Origin of the term “spam”

It is widely believed the term spam is derived from the 1970 SPAM sketch of the BBC television comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”.

The sketch is set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the waiter recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM… lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM”, hence “SPAMming” the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to British rationing during World War II. SPAM was one of the few meat products that avoided rationing, and hence was widely available.

In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined “spam” in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for “spam”: “Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.”

So there you go: don’t take the holy name of Spam in vain, except when you’re deleting the stuff.