Word.ws English Dictionary

beerware

beerware noun: software that can be used under a relaxed licence, with the user encouraged to pay for the software by donating to its author enough money to buy a beer.

Noun

beerware (uncountable)

  1. (humorous, often) Software that can be used under a relaxed licence, with the user encouraged to pay for the software by donating to its author enough money to buy a beer.

Origin of beerware

From beer + -ware.

Questions about beerware

What does beerware mean?
Beerware means software that can be used under a relaxed licence, with the user encouraged to pay for the software by donating to its author enough money to buy a beer.
What part of speech is beerware?
Beerware is a noun.

Words near beerware in the dictionary

  1. beertenders
  2. beertini
  3. beertinis
  4. Beerup
  5. Beervana
  6. beerware
  7. beerwort
  8. beerworts
  9. beerwurst
  10. beery
  11. Beerys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beerware (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-beerware.wav.

Cite this entry: “beerware.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beerware. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.