hardwear

Noun

hardware (uncountable)

1. Fixtures, equipment, fasteners, tools, and devices used for general-purpose construction and repair of a structure or object. Also such equipment as sold as stock by a store of the same name, e.g. hardware store.
   • He needed a hammer, nails, screws, nuts, bolts and other assorted hardware, so he went to the hardware store.
2. (informal) Equipment.
   • military hardware
3. The part of a computer that is fixed and cannot be altered without replacement or physical modification; motherboard, expansion cards, etc.
   • Hardware is the generally accepted colloquism for anything inside a computer other than an engineer.1952, R.L. Michaelson, “Binary Arithmetic”, in The Incorporated Statistician, volume 3, number 1 (Feb. 1952), pages 35–40
4. Electronic equipment.
5. Metal implements.
   • The designers have put their logo on the hardware of this bag here.
6. (slang) A firearm.

See all 7 meanings of hardware