Word To Use Today: spam.

Want to know about Spam? Then visit the Spam Museum in Austin, Texas. If you're there at the right time you may even catch the Spam Jam, the world's finest Spam Carnival.

If you go at the beginning of April you'll be able to take part in Spamarama, but that's not a serious celebration, it's just a bit of fun.

Spam was born in Austin, but it is now to be found in more than a hundred countries in many different forms. As well as Classic Spam you can get Spam Hot & Spicy, Spam with Bacon, Spam with Cheese...

...Hawaii, for instance, is famous for its Spam Musabi, which is spam on rice wrapped in nori seaweed.


Of course, as well as a kind of processed meat, spam is also electronic junk mail.

Unfortunately we all know all about that.


Word To Use Today: Spam. Spam was first made by the Hormel Company in Austin, Texas, USA in 1937. The word made up of the words spiced and ham.

Spam meaning electronic junk mail comes from a comedy sketch by Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

This one:

That's from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Early internet users flooded websites with the word Spam in imitation of the sketch, and a new word was born.

Spamalot is a Monty Python musical by Eric Idle, the computer programming language Python uses spam as one of its metasyntactic variables.

Oh, and spam is also a secret code written with genetically engineered bacteria: Stenography by Printed Arrays of Bacteria.