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I remember when the go-to search term was "warez."
I still don't know if that was supposed to be pronounced like "wares" or "war-ehz." 🤔
My dad pronounced it war-easy. Some time later I played Morrowind and, well... "Khajit has warez if you have coin"
I don't think either answer is wrong.
I always thought it was warez as in "wears". My understanding is it was short for "softwares" or something. Take the end, add a dash of 1337sp34k and you get warez.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Software and hardware are both wares aka goods or services that are for sale. Merchants deal in wares. Pirates deal in warez.
Except that softwares and hardwares probably came out of the word "wares".
My native language isn't English, so for me as a teen back then it was definitely the second option.