The Rice University Neologisms Database

Unsolicited junk email, or inappropriate and irrelevant postings to electronic fora. This slang term is rapidly evolving. Originally, "spam" was used on the internet to refer to any large body of text, not necessarily objectionable but perhaps simply alarming in its volume. People would apologize for "spamming" others when they sent them long email, or "flee spam" by leaving a particularly busy chat room for someplace quieter. This usage is derivative of the luncheon meat by way of a Monty Python skit, which is too complex to go into here. With the advent of internet mass-marketing, the most commonly-encountered form of spam became the unsolicited advertisement. As the citizens of the internet mobilize against this in-your-face exploitative commercialism, the term "spam" is entering the larger language with the somewhat narrowed meaning of "unsolicited electronic advertisements". Net-veterans still use the word in both the newer and the older sense, relying on context to distinguish between large bodies of text and junk advertising.