February 28th, 2011
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On the linguistic productivity of the word spam

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The word spam has spawned off its own corner of the English language.

spamdexing inflating one’s rank in a Web index
sping Trackback spam
splog A fake blog
spim Spam instant messages
spasms Spam SMS messages
spit VoIP spam
sporgery Spamming with a forged From line
spambot A computer which sends spam
blam spam comments on a blog

I’m impressed by how productive the root word spam has become.

Gratuitous cross-promotion: My colleague Terry Zink occasionally writes about spam on his Cyber Security Blog.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Non-Computer

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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