[Ads-l] Antedatings and Etymological Speculation Concerning "Spam" (Computing)

[Shapiro, Fred]

Here are some minor antedatings of the OED's first uses of "spam" (computing) and "spammer":

spam, v. (OED 1994 [25 July])  1994 _Manhattan_ (Kan.) _Mercury_ 8 May 52/4 (Newspapers.com)  The cost to spam an advertisement in thousands of news groups, where it is potentially read by hundreds of thousands of computer users, is typically less than $50.

spammer (OED 1994 [25 July])  1994 _San Francisco Examiner_ 25 May 32/1 (Newspapers.com)  Some Netheads responded to the lawyers' ad barrage with guerilla tactics, "flaming" the spammers.

The etymology of this use of the word "spam" is almost universally said to derive from a Monty Python skit in which the food-name "Spam" is repeated incessantly.  Am I the only one who questions this derivation?  To me the semantic link between mass promulgation of advertisements and massive repetition of a word. although plausible, is somewhat weak.  The South Bend Tribune, 12 May 1994, said that "Among network veterans, such random posting is called 'spamming' -- a term derived from a brand of pink, canned meat that splatters messily when hurled."  The OED's first citation for the verb "spam," dated 25 July 1994, says the term was "meant to evoke the effect of dropping a can of Spam into a fan filling the surrounding space with meat" (this brings to mind the idiom "the shit hits the fan").  In neither of these two articles is there any mention of Monty Python.  I suggest that "Spam splattering messily when hurled" may be a more likely etymological explanation of the computing meaning of "spam" than the Python skit.

Fred Shapiro

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org