student asking question

What's the origin of the word "spam?" (Not the processed meat, but the ones like spam mail or spam ads!)

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Ah, so the term "spam" for email is closely related to "spam" the processed meat product! The email term is said to have come from a skit that advertised the meat product spam by repetitively saying the word "spam." It was then used for the first time in 1993 when a bug in a computer system sent 200 emails to a news publication. Ex: I have so much spam in my kitchen cupboard. Ex: I have so much spam in my spam inbox.

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