Hardware is the physical part of a computer — the bits you could drop on your foot. The screen, the keyboard, the fan whirring inside, the chip soldered to the board.
It exists mostly as the opposite of software, the code that runs on it; when a machine dies, the first question is whether the fault is hardware or software. The older meaning is alive and well, especially in America: hardware is tools and metal goods — nails, hinges, screws, hammers — and a hardware store is where you buy them, which a British person would call an ironmonger or a DIY shop. Newspapers use it for heavy military kit as well, so tanks and missiles are military hardware. Hardware is uncountable, so it is a piece of hardware, never a hardware and never hardwares.
1nounhardwareThe physical parts of a computer or other machine.
“The fault is in the hardware, not the software.”
2nountoolsTools, fittings and metal goods sold for building and repairs.
“He bought hinges and a tin of paint at the hardware store.”
3nounheavyHeavy military equipment such as vehicles and weapons.
“The parade was mostly a display of new hardware.”
hardware is physical equipment.
Hardware is simply hard plus -ware, the old English word for goods, and it has been in the language since the middle of the 1400s. That is five centuries of nails and hinges before any computer needed a name for its metal parts. Software came along only in the twentieth century, made deliberately as its opposite.
Middle English
hardware
English, today
hardware
From Middle English hardware; equivalent to hard + -ware; attested since the mid-15th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA