computer jargon

[informashun]

short and sweet.

what does the word spam stand for?

[kevb0444]

Nothing. It came from the Monty Python "Spam" sketch. In the early Chat rooms services like PeopleLink and the early days of AOL, people would flooded the screen with sizeable quotes from the Monty Python routine. This was generally used as a tactic by insiders of a particular group who wanted to drive newcomers out of the room so the usual conversation could continue. This act, previously termed "flooding" or "trashing", came to be called spamming as well.

[commoner]

As far as the SPAM in the Monty Python sketch is concerned SPAM is a type of tinned meat.......which in my younger days was widely use as the basis for cheap meals...eg Spam and chips etc........

i....ntroduced in 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen in the 1930s when the product, whose original name�"Hormel Spiced Ham"�was far less memorable, began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name SPAM was "Shoulder of Pork and hAM". According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam � The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, brother of the Hormel vice president and an actor. However the name was originally created by George Savoy, but the credit goes to Kenneth Daigneau. George Savoy is the creater of the acronym SPAM, meaning Spiced Pork and hAM. The current official explanation is that the name is a syllabic abbreviation of "SPiced hAM", and that the originator was given a $100 prize for coming up with the name.

Other explanations of the origin of the term include the definitions "Spiced Pork And haM" and "SPare hAM"; there are also some jocular definitions, such as "SPoiled hAM", "Synthetically Produced Artificial Meat", "Steam Pressed Amalgamated Meat", "Some Parts Are Meat", "Specially Processed American Meat", "Someone's Pigs Are Missing", "Slime Posing As Meat", "Spare Parts and Animal Mucus", "meat left over from the SPanish AMerican war", or "Squirrels Possums And Mice" amongst a multitude of other similar parody names.............

[Hard@it]

Commoner - how can I ever look a tin of Spam in the face again ?