word
Spam
Unwanted bulk material — originally email, now any annoying overload.
Origin
The internet sense comes from a 1970 Monty Python sketch in which a café menu offers Spam (the canned meat) with everything, sung over by Vikings until conversation is impossible. Early ARPANET users borrowed the word for unwanted bulk messages, and it stuck as email exploded.
Modern usage
Used for unwanted texts, DMs, sales calls, and figuratively for any flood of low-quality output. 'Stop spamming the group chat' is a normal sentence now.
Tags
junk
internet
overload