SPAM

By now, pretty much everyone associates the term "spam" with bulk unsolicited email. In case you are wondering how the term "spam" came to mean what it means, it is a reference to a Monty Python sketch where a chorus of Vikings sit in a diner (which serves many dishes with Spam in it) and periodically begin to chant the word "spam" over and over again in a sing-song, drowning out all other conversation.

Lore has it that in the early days of the Internet, the term was applied to numerous identical postings to USENET, which is a large collection of newsgroups, still popular today. The reference fit well, because these unwanted posts drowned out legitimate conversations, and so the term stuck.