Malware

How to spell malware

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce malware

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does malware mean?

1. nounSoftware designed to damage, disrupt, or gain unauthorised access to a computer system.

Malware in a sentence

• The attachment installed malware that locked every file on the laptop.

• The company runs daily scans to detect malware before it spreads across the network.

Where does malware come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern blend coined in the 1990s by joining the Latin-derived prefix mal-, meaning 'bad' or 'evil' (from malus, the Latin word for 'bad'), to the suffix -ware, lifted directly from 'software'. The -ware element itself is an old Germanic word for manufactured goods or wares, which is why we already had 'hardware' and 'software' before computing borrowed the pattern. Malware therefore reads literally as 'bad software', a tidy umbrella for viruses, worms, ransomware and other hostile programs. The term spread quickly through the security industry as a convenient catch-all and is now standard in technical and everyday writing. The spelling is regular once you see the two parts: the same mal- that begins 'malicious' and 'malfunction' plus the familiar -ware ending.

How the word is built

• mal- (bad, evil, from Latin malus)
• -ware (goods or software, clipped from 'software')