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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

spam.

Unsolicited bulk electronic messages.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/spæm/Received-Pronunciation/spam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/spæm/[speəm]

  1. Unsolicited bulk electronic messages.

    Internet · countable · rare · uncountable
    I get far too much spam.
    I received 58 spams yesterday.

  2. Any undesired electronic content automatically generated for commercial purposes.

    Internet · uncountable

  3. Excessive, often unwanted and repeated online messages.

    Internet · countable · uncountable

  4. Ellipsis of spam account.

    Internet · abbreviation · alt-of · countable · ellipsis · uncountable

  5. A large quantity or multitude of anything done repetitively or considered unusually or indiscriminately repetitive.

    broadly · countable · often · uncountable

  6. A type of tinned meat made mainly from ham.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

The original sense (canned ham) is a proprietary name registered by Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in U.S., 1937. It is presumed to be a conflation of either "spiced ham" or "shoulder of pork and ham" but was soon extended to other kinds of canned meat. Hormel spells the trademarked name in all upper case. The use for unsolicited and unwanted email derives from a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch. In the 1970 sketch, a group of Vikings in a restaurant repeatedly chant the word "spam". The earliest recorded real-life use for this sense occurs around 1993 which finds reference in a newsgroup post dated March 31, 1993, but the term may have been in use on "Multi-User Dungeons" (MUDs) in the 1980s.

verb/spæm/Received-Pronunciation/spam/British, Northern-England, Scotland, Southern, Standard, Wales/spæm/[speəm]

  1. To send spam (i.e. unsolicited electronic messages.)

    Internet · intransitive

  2. To send spam (i.e. unsolicited electronic messages) to a person or entity.

    Internet · transitive

  3. To send messages repeatedly, often with disruptive effect; to flood.

    Internet · intransitive · transitive

  4. To do something rapidly and repeatedly.

    broadly · transitive
    Stop spamming that special attack!
    Spam the Z key to get a speed boost.
Where this word comes from

The original sense (canned ham) is a proprietary name registered by Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in U.S., 1937. It is presumed to be a conflation of either "spiced ham" or "shoulder of pork and ham" but was soon extended to other kinds of canned meat. Hormel spells the trademarked name in all upper case. The use for unsolicited and unwanted email derives from a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch. In the 1970 sketch, a group of Vikings in a restaurant repeatedly chant the word "spam". The earliest recorded real-life use for this sense occurs around 1993 which finds reference in a newsgroup post dated March 31, 1993, but the term may have been in use on "Multi-User Dungeons" (MUDs) in the 1980s.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.