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spam

[spam] Example Sentences Origin

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Trademark. a canned food product consisting especially of pork formed into a solid block.

noun

(lowercase

) disruptive messages, especially commercial messages posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail.

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Spam is one of our favorite verbs.

So is yaff. Does it mean:

to chew (food) slowly and thoroughly.

to bark; yelp.

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verb (used with object)

(lowercase

) to send spam to.

verb (used without object)

(lowercase

) to send spam.

Origin:
(def. 1) sp(iced) + (h)am; (other defs.) 1990–95; referring to a comedy routine on Monty Python's Flying Circus, British TV series

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To spam

Example Sentences

After a hiatus over the holiday season, spam is back to high levels.

While you're at it, the spam filter still needs some work.

Sawyer compares it to keeping your email address secret to avoid being inundated with spam.

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After a hiatus over the holiday season, spam is back to high levels.

While you're at it, the spam filter still needs some work.

Sawyer compares it to keeping your email address secret to avoid being inundated with spam.

What the moderator isn't telling you is that after each of my postings, somebody puts up a spam advert for merchandise.

For a taste of the tropics, top this burger with a combination of sweet and salty spam and pineapple.

Spam ruined his domain, bringing on a hail of bounced e-mail and nasty messages.

For every spammer who is sued into submission, legions of spam rings generate billions of spam messages every year.

She wishes good news to good people, clumps of spam to the bad, and new opportunities to the resilient and righteous.

Microsoft held up its hand against the tide of spam.

Can't you or won't you see all the spam and advertising taking over this site.

They are used in applications including image-recognition software, robotics and e-mail spam filtering.

Experts at a spam forum warn that text-messaging on newer cell phones could tempt spammers to reach a new audience.

In this lesson, students investigate how spam and viruses work.

The truth is spam will disappear altogether in a few years as people wise up and spam filters get better.

Do you have nothing better to do than spam forums, with your inane ramblings.

Even when accounts aren't down, users must sustain a steady stream of unwelcome spam.

There used to be a name for marketing things to clumps of people by blasting messages at them: spam.

Please get your computer scientists on the problem of advertising spam in the reader's comment section.

Spam is annoying, but you can block yourself from cookies and related tracking if desired rather easily.

Marketers want to send commercial email, but fear the spam label.

Systems that use collaborative filters to keep spam away already exist, though there are many other ways to do the same thing.

Internet users deluged by spam are resorting to the tactics of medieval castle guards who barred all strangers at the gate.

One way to actually make money off spam is to sue the people sending it.

But a glitch reveals the club's roster, potentially exposing members to more backlash from those opposed to spam.

California has a new bill that bans cell-phone spam.

There's some ingenious virus-laden e-mail spam making the rounds right now.

Fake spam blogs are becoming the scourge of the blogosphere.

There does not appear to be any spam filtering on the iPad.

The biggest threat to personal computing is neither spam nor viruses.

Spam as a percent of total mail also set a record this quarter.

Peering into the contents of a spam filter is a truly educational.

One of the firm's cash cows is software that finds spam servers and blocks their transmissions.

If you thought spam on your computer was a bother, brace yourself for round two: spammers want to find you on your cellphone.

For many smaller businesses, having messages blocked or shuttled into a spam folder can mean lost revenue.

Siemens this year, says he shut off registration because a couple of people had clearly signed up to spam students.

It helps keep spam at bay, at a cost of slowing the conversation.

While comment and trackback spam are not technically splogs, they are related.

Some activists are making money pursuing spam cases in small claims court, but few say.

But researchers say the spam numbers will return to normal as criminals re-build their networks of captured computers.

No one would say that spam is alive, but it might as well.

They're not for sale, but comment spam has uses sometimes:.

Captchas-distorted words that can be interpreted by humans more easily than by machines-tamed spam on craigslist for a while.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

spam (spæm)

—vb , spams, spamming, spammed
1.	to send unsolicited electronic mail or text messages simultaneously to a number of e-mail addresses or mobile phones

—n
2.	unsolicited electronic mail or text messages sent in this way

[C20: from the repeated use of the word Spam in a popular sketch from the British television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, first broadcast in 1969]

'spammer

—n

Spam (spæm)

—n
	trademark a kind of tinned luncheon meat, made largely from pork

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

spam

proprietary name registered by Geo. A. Hormel & Co. in U.S., 1937; probably a conflation of spiced ham. Soon extended to other kinds of canned meat. In the sense of "Internet junk mail" it was coined by Usenet users after March 31, 1993, when Usenet administrator Richard Depew inadvertently posted the

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same message 200 times to a discussion group. The term had been used in online text games, and it was from the comedy routine in British TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" where a restaurant's menu items all devolve into spam.

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American Heritage

Cultural Dictionary

spam definition

Unsolicited, undesired e-mail. Also used as a verb. Spam is the e-mail version of junk mail.

Note: The name comes from a Monty Python comedy skit about a restaurant that served only Spam.

Slang Dictionary

spam definition

n.
something disliked, typically, but not necessarily, food. (From the brand name of a canned meat product.) : I can't eat this “spam.” It could be spoiled.
n.
one or a series of uninvited email messages advertising money-making schemes, pornography, or sales of any kind. : If I don't recognize the sender, I assume the message is spam and I delete it.
tv.
to clutter or fill someone's email account with spam(sense 2). : Some jerk is spamming me with an advertisement for dirty pictures.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

spam definition

1. (From Hormel's Spiced Ham, via the Monty Python "Spam" song) To post irrelevant or inappropriate messages to one or more Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, or other messaging system in deliberate or accidental violation of netiquette.
It is possible to spam a newsgroup with one well- (or ill-) planned message, e.g. asking "What do you think of abortion?" on soc.women. This can be done by cross-posting, e.g. any message which is crossposted to alt.rush-limbaugh and alt.politics.homosexuality will almost inevitably spam both groups. (Compare troll and flame bait).
Posting a message to a significant proportion of all newsgroups is a sure way to spam Usenet and become an object of almost universal hatred. Canter and Siegel spammed the net with their Green card post.
If you see an article which you think is a deliberate spam, DO NOT post a follow-up - doing so will only contribute to the general annoyance. Send a polite message to the poster by private e-mail and CC it to "postmaster" at the same address. Bear in mind that the posting's origin might have been forged or the apparent sender's account might have been used by someone else without his permission.
The word was coined as the winning entry in a 1937 competition to choose a name for Hormel Foods Corporation's "spiced meat" (now officially known as "SPAM luncheon meat"). Correspondant Bob White claims the modern use of the term predates Monty Python by at least ten years. He cites an editor for the Dallas Times Herald describing Public Relations as "throwing a can of spam into an electric fan just to see if any of it would stick to the unwary passersby."
Usenet newsgroup: news:news.admin.net-abuse.
See also netiquette.
2. (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To indiscriminately send large amounts of unsolicited e-mail meant to promote a product or service. Spam in this sense is sort of like the electronic equivalent of junk mail sent to "Occupant".
In the 1990s, with the rise in commercial awareness of the net, there are actually scumbags who offer spamming as a "service" to companies wishing to advertise on the net. They do this by mailing to collections of e-mail addresses, Usenet news, or mailing lists. Such practises have caused outrage and aggressive reaction by many net users against the individuals concerned.
3. (Apparently a generalisation of sense 2, above) To abuse any network service or tool by for promotional purposes.
"AltaVista is an index, not a promotional tool. Attempts to fill it with promotional material lower the value of the index for everyone. [...] We will disallow URL submissions from those who spam the index. In extreme cases, we will exclude all their pages from the index." -- Altavista.
4. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data.
See also buffer overflow, overrun screw, smash the stack.
5. (A narrowing of sense 1, above) To flood any chat forum or Internet game with purposefully annoying text or macros. Compare Scrolling.
(2003-09-21)

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