February 28th, 2011

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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