Origin of the word SPAM?

Factual Questions
1

Is it an acronym?

2

Salt Pork and hAM

3

SPiced hAM, actually.

The master on the general subject of SPAM:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_229.html

4

Well, when The Master interviewed the nice folks at Hormel Foods, regarding What’s in SPAM?, he was told

5

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_229.html

All of the answers are there. Read it carefully.

6

And don’t forget to visit

brought to you by the friendly people at http://www.hormel.com/

7

  1. Run a can of SPAM through a meat grinder. (If you don’t have a meat grinder, you can use a food processor – just don’t get it too fine.)

  2. Mix in Miracle Whip Salad Dressing® and some sweet pickle relish.

  3. Chill.

  4. Serve on soft white bread.

This was one of my dad’s favourite recipes. He’d make up a batch of SPAM salad for when we’d go camping/JetSkiing. People were often dubious when he offered them a sandwich, but they tried it to be nice and were surprised that something made with SPAM could actually taste good.

For some reason it doesn’t taste as good when you use wheat bread or mayonaise. I don’t make it often because I tend mot to buy Miracle Whip® or white bread. But ya know? It’s good for a picnic.

8

tom Does this make you a “spammer”?

9

Where you asking about Spam ( as in Spam Spam Spam Spam etc ) the meat product or is it about spam the junk mail ?

10

Cecil’s article answers both. Since he asked “is it an acronym or something”, he probably meant the meat product.

And would clogging traffic on a bulletin board be “throwing a spammer in the works”?

11

This question is not only for our time, but spams the ages. A rather meaty question.

12

SPAM = Stuff Posing As Meat

13

Stuff Posing As Meat? I heard it is so called (in computer-ese) because it’s just junk in a can.

14

I had always kind of assumed that the term spam for unwanted e-mail derived from the rather non-infamous “Spam Jake Day” (May 23, 1994), the day on which Discordians, Subgenii and their ilk were supposed to have bombarded Hormel headquarters with letters claiming that each of their religions was the true “Church of Spam”.

Granted, that seems like an obscure origin, but if you consider that Internet culture and Discordian culture probably intersected quite a bit more in the days before the AOL blitz, it seems like a reasonable enough explanation.

–CH

15

We were using the term ‘Spam’ on the Usenet well before May 23, 1994.

I’m comfortable with the Python origin. I recall making this association the first time I came across the term circa 1992/93.