Email Spam

I heard from Vicki in Madison, Wisconsin, who wrote,

My daughter and I disagree about the likely etymology of spam.

I suggest that the current usage, meaning unsolicited and unwanted email, is an extension of the earlier reference to the undesirable processed meat product.

And I’ll certainly agree with the undesirable part.

She doesn’t find this explanation persuasive.

Who’s right?

Well, you’re wrong.

First of all, because spam is wonderful.

It tastes great.

It means spiced ham, right?

And I don’t know what spices they put in there.

Pork shoulder and ham.

What part of the poor animals.

But whoa.

Okay.

So we disagree there.

I’ve never been one of those people who quotes movies at length or television shows.

And I don’t think you’re one of those people either.

No.

We both know that Monty Python is one of those shows that people know the entire movies and all of the episodes and can quote them back the same way that in other generations people used to quote Shakespeare to each other, right?

Something like that.

Now it’s the Big Lebowski and Monty Python and that’s what people quote to each other.

In any case, there’s a really funny sketch.

I mean, it’s just incredibly funny because it’s so absurd.

It’s almost like they had a set and they had some costumes and then they just improv’d something to happen with this particular set and these particular costumes.

So a more or less normal couple are trying to order food in a small diner.

The woman doesn’t want any spam, but all of the dishes have spam in them, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.

And he gets to the point where the man says, well, what have you got?

And the waitress replies, well, there’s egg and bacon, egg, sausage and bacon, egg and spam, egg, bacon and spam, egg, bacon, sausage and spam, spam, bacon, sausage and spam, spam, spam, spam, bacon and spam, spam, sausage, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato and spam.

And these are the options.

Everything’s got spam in it.

It’s like spam is both the entree, the main dish, the condiment.

It’s even your drink, you know, everything’s got spam in it.

But that’s not exactly where the spam comes from.

Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of Vikings eating in this cafe.

This is what I’m saying about these costumes lying around.

Really, they just like, I don’t know if they were high or just like really inspired, you know.

Church went really well that day.

I don’t know.

There’s a bunch of Vikings who are sitting in the cafe.

They’re chanting the word spam.

Every time they hear the word spam, they go, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam.

So this foreigner comes in with some garbled English about spam in his lower intestine.

Don’t even ask me.

I have no idea what that means.

The whole thing is this big mess of non sequiturs, all of them related to spam.

Even the show’s credits, because this is like the last skit for that particular episode of the Monty Python show, even the show’s credits, which ran right after the skit, have the word spam interspersed throughout with people’s titles and people’s names and stuff.

And it’s just funny.

And so from here, here’s where we get this whole idea that the spam that you get in your email box, it’s unwanted, it’s pervasive, it pops up in places it shouldn’t.

That’s the whole idea here.

It’s just this idea that this word spam just is filled just throughout this skit in a ridiculous way.

It’s inappropriate.

It’s not related to anything else that’s happening there.

And this is what spam is about.

And it’s particularly significant if you can remember that the earliest spam was like showing up in discussion groups online that were about particular topics where somebody would – you’d be talking about an operating system like, I don’t know, a coding or some kind of program or something technical or Star Trek.

And then somebody would pop up and say, do you need a green card lottery ticket?

Do you want to sign up here to get your green card?

Completely off topic, not related to these things.

And so the idea of this unrelated topic being introduced into something is directly related to this skit.

It is 100% for certain the origin of the word spam when we mean something online that’s undesirable.

Have you got anything without spam in it?

Well, spam, egg, sausage, and spam has not got much spam in it.

I don’t want any Spam.

Why can’t you have egg, bacon, Spam, and sausage?

That’s got Spam in it.

Not as much as Spam egg, sausage, and Spam.

Could I have egg, bacon, Spam, and sausage without the Spam?

What do you mean?

I don’t like Spam.

Oh, my gosh.

Was there ever a more perfect word?

You know, and it’s great.

And the thing is, Hormel, who actually has Spam trademark, and it’s their product, they’ve been so great about it.

I really think they handled it exactly right.

In a world of lawsuits and cease and desist letters, Hormel did the right thing.

They said, yeah, we get it.

Our product’s kind of cheesy and people make fun of it.

In the U.K., they remember spam being like the things that Americans shipped over by the truckload that they ate too much of until they were sick of spam.

And that’s actually ultimately the origin of the idea of this spam in the skit.

There’s this cultural memory in the United Kingdom of those really rough post-war years where there wasn’t much on the plate but spam or whatever you grew into the garden.

So Hormel has done the right thing and just allowed this to continue because they realized that there’s nothing they can do about it and there’s some fun to be had.

Well, if you’ve got a question about some modern bit of slang that’s got you befuddled, I think we can help you.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, more of your questions and observations about language.

That’s next when A Way with Words continues.

Fire!