SPAM defined, Quick! Tell OED

Wordsmith.org

SPAM - I could hardly credit my ears.
Discovered the following while watching "The 1940s House" - a BBC TV program set and filmed in England on a family living as people did in WW II years 1939-1945. All crammed into nine weeks. Fascinating. Did you see it in UK?
In scence "set" about late '44 when US goods began to appear on grocers' shelves. Sure enough the grocer showed the can of SPAM to the Mother and said it was(is) Specially Processed American Meat.
Can it be true?
It's a pretty well researched program.
Is the mystery of the "mystery meat" solved at last thanks to BBC TV and the experts contracted for the series?

SPAM post by tsuwm on Nov 4 ( saving you the link)

the next edition of OED will include their word-of-the-day:
SPAMming, n. NEW EDITION: draft entry June 2001
Computing slang.
The practice of sending irrelevant, inappropriate, or unsolicited postings or e-mails over the Internet, esp. indiscriminately and in very large numbers; an instance of this.

[1993 Wired Dec. 32/4 SPAMmin'To speak aimlessly on a mishmash of topics. To stuff someone's brain with information of questionable content.] 1994 San Francisco Chron. (Nexis) 28 Apr. E7 People around the world started flooding Canter and Siegel's mailbox, sending junk faxes to the fax number that was in the ad, and basically doing everything possible to overload them. (This is known as SPAMming.) 1995 Wired Mar. 46/1 Boldt lists the e-mail addresses of people responsible for junk e-mail and Net SPAMming so you can easily add them to your kill file or mail bomb 'em back. 1999 Independent 7 Dec. I. 15/6 The practice of flooding e-mail, �SPAMming� in English, meanwhile is pollu-postage, from pollution and public post.

Might be they back formed it as though it were an acronym, but it's SPiced hAM as far as I know. And didn't we ship it to them all during the war? Or at least all USns knew of the war.

didn't we ship it to them all during the war?
Sure did, Faldage. And it was a product that we could obtain here, too - for very few ration points, as I recall which made it an attractive product. We had it fried with breakfst eggs and in sandwiches.
That's what I mean .... SPiced hAM sounds good, I agree. But. I have to give some credence to those experts on the program,like the head of the Churchill Archives, an Oxford professor of history etc etc etc.... Basically I wonder why OED is opting to use the electronic meaning without giving the "real" SPAM a mention.

Thousands of WW vets got to hate Spam. It was on the market before WWII.
Spam
Trademark created by contraction from Hormel's original name for the product -- ``Spiced Ham'' -- which was copied
by other meatpackers.

n. A pressed pink pork product marketed by Hormel since 1937. It was distributed as a food supplement in the US
during the Great Depression, and to British civilians during WWII. The long-time butt of jokes; subject of a skit and song
on the Monty Python TV series.

>I wonder why OED is opting to use the electronic meaning without giving the "real" SPAM a mention.

unwarranted conclusion! I gave OED's new entry for spamming, which stems from the verb 'to spam'�, which in turn stems from Hormel's SPAM�, of which they say [App. blend of SP(ICED ppl. a. + H)AM n.1, but see also quot. 1937]

1937 Squeal 1 July 1/2 In the last month Geo. A. Hormel & Co...launched the product Spam... The �think-up� of the name [is] credited to Kenneth Daigneau, New York actor... Seems as if he had considered the word a good memorable trade-name for some time, had only waited for a product to attach it to.

� the verb has two senses:
1. to give a person an unpleasant task [rare, Brit. milit. slang]
2. (the computer slang) [influenced by MP usage of SPAM]

edit: the significance of the source of the 1937 citation just now barreled in..

1. to give a person an unpleasant task [rare, Brit. milit. slang]

The Brits seem to have done the best job of it for all applications of the *word.

edit: the significance of the source of the 1937 citation just now barreled in..
Was it pink?

Thank you, tsuwm, for setting it all to rights ... guess the BBC was having a bit of fun with us USns. Who'd a thunk it of the staid BBC ?

The Hormel Company won a 1937 government competition to provide a meat product which did not require refrigeration for storage or transport.

My speculation would be that Britain must have had a huge amount war and postwar and that was where the Monty Python restaurant scene came from - I always thought the e-mail name sprang from "Python"

Don't know if this fits in with words:

The Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota, just celebrated the 100,000 visitor since the museum opened. Visitor received a can of.....

Thanks for the input folks! One good use for SPAM (in the can) is in with the winter emergency stuff in the car. If you get stuck in a storm it's a handy thing to have along if you haven't access to MREs (Meals ready to eat.) I cannot understand why people keep the winter emergency stuff in the trunk (boot) ! If you are stuck in a storm-be it snow, ice, or whatever - you need that stuff where you can get at it. Hence mine is in an old tote bag on the floor of the back seat. Or don't you have worries like that where you live?
And why am I rattling on? and what has this to do with words? I'm shutting up now.

I heard that!

In reply to:
guess the BBC was having a bit of fun with us USns. Who'd a thunk it of the staid BBC ?

The alternative explanation is that this etymology was popularly believed in Britain during WWII, and the producers thought it unlikely that a British grocer of that time would know the true etymology.

Bingley