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hardware

/ˈhɑɹdˌwɛɹ/noun

hardware is spelled H-A-R-D-W-A-R-E. The wrong spelling people search most is hardwear: about 260 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 43 of all searches for the word. Hardware is a noun meaning “Fixtures, equipment, fasteners, tools, and devices used for general-purpose construction and repair of a…”.

How many letters and syllables are in hardware?

Letters8: H-A-R-D-W-A-R-E
Syllables2 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing20 times per million words; the 4,302nd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, hardwear, about 260 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell hardware?

Hardware is spelled H-A-R-D-W-A-R-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 43 of the searches for hardware in either form.

hardwarethe right spelling11,000 searches a month
hardwearan extra e, a missing e260 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is hardware?

Hardware appears 20 times per million words in written English, the 4,302nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce hardware?

  • US /ˈhɑɹdˌwɛɹ/
  • UK /ˈhɑːdˌwɛə/

Hardware has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-hardware.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What does hardware mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 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. 2

    informalEquipment.

    military hardware

  3. 3

    The part of a computer that is fixed and cannot be altered without replacement or physical modification; motherboard, expansion cards, etc.

  4. 4

    Electronic equipment.

  5. 5

    Metal implements.

    The designers have put their logo on the hardware of this bag here.

  6. 6

    slangA firearm.

  7. 7

    slangMedals or trophies.

  8. 8

    Ellipsis of hardware store.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate hardware?

Wiktionary records 4 abbreviations of hardware: HW, hdwe, hdwe., hw.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Hardware in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchéquipement (fixtures, equipment, tools and devices), matériel, hardware, matériel informatique (material part of a computer), quincaillerie (metal implements), arme à feu (slang: firearm)
GermanEisenwaren (fixtures, equipment, tools and devices), Hardware (material part of a computer)
Portugueseequipamento (fixtures, equipment, tools and devices), hardware (material part of a computer), ferragens (metal implements)
Spanishhardware, soporte físico, hárdwer (material part of a computer)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does hardware come from?

From Middle English hardware; equivalent to hard + -ware; attested since the mid-15th century.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after hardware