Acronym-etymologies

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:24 PM -0800 4/1/02, ANNE V. GILBERT wrote:
>Sagehen:
>
>>  Is spam SPAM?  In other words, is it merely a reference to its
>>  disagreeableness, or is it an  acronym (Something-or-other Advertising
>>  Message)?
>
>I'm not sure whether you're referring to the canned meat that's still being
>sold in grocery stores and used to be imported all over the place in WW II
>or the crap that appears in people-s e-mail boxes .  In the former case, I
>think Hormel or somebody came up with "spam" because it was fake "ham"(or
>soemthing like this).  In the latter case, it's an acronym for
>"self-propelled advertising mechanism", which is exactly what e-mail spam
>is.

That's exactly what I'm quite sure it isn't, at least originally.
This bears all the earmarks of a backronym--the metaphorical
extension of the canned meat, via the Monty Python patter, came first.

larry