spam

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Unwanted emails or messages, usually advertising, sent to many people at once.

   I get far too much spam in my inbox every day.

2. 2
   verb

   To send unwanted messages or emails to many people.

   The company was fined for spamming millions of users.

3. 3
   verb

   To do something rapidly and repeatedly, often annoyingly.

   Stop spamming the chat with the same message.

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…

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