Spam
1930s: apparently from sp(iced h)am . The internet sense appears to derive from a sketch by the British ‘Monty Python’ comedy group, set in a cafe in which every item on the menu includes spam.
wiktionary
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 [1] 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 sketch (Flying Circus, Episode 25). 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 an email dated March 31, 1993.
The term appears to have been used earlier in a different sense in relation to " Multi-User Dungeons" ( MUDs), a kind of multi-user computer gaming environment before widespread use of the Internet, in the 1980s.
etymonline
spam (n.)
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 same message 200 times to a discussion group. The term had been used in online text games, and ultimately it is from a 1970 sketch on the British TV show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" wherein a reading of a restaurant's menu devolves into endless repetitions of "spam."
