Warez

//wɛə(ɹ)z// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Software that is illegally obtained or distributed. Internet, Leet, dated, uncountable, usually

    "By the end of the day Mad Hatter, a ringleader of the software piracy group called the Inner Circle, will have poured 300 Mbytes of illegal “warez” onto the Internet."

Verb
  1. 1
    To obtain a copy of (software or other works of authorship) illegally. Internet, Leet, dated

    "Many of these keys are, obviously, being used by people who've warezed XP, but there's also a reasonably large number of software professionals and refuseniks who have used them even though they have a legitimately bought version of XP."

Example

More examples

"By the end of the day Mad Hatter, a ringleader of the software piracy group called the Inner Circle, will have poured 300 Mbytes of illegal “warez” onto the Internet."

Etymology

The leetspeak form of wares, as a contraction of software.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.