硬件
yìng jiàn · HSK 5
hardware
💻 硬件 = hard + thing/item; hard physical components
硬 means hard/firm and 件 is a measure word for items or parts. Together: the hard, physical items of a computer — hardware. Contrast with 软件 (soft + item = software).
硬 — stone 石 + 更 (gēng, phonetic)
硬 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 石 'stone' gives the meaning—stones are hard—while the right side 更 originally suggested the pronunciation. From the literal sense of stone-hardness, 硬 extended to mean firm, stiff, or stubborn in both physical and figurative uses.
件 — person radical 亻 + ox 牛
件 combines the person radical 亻 with 牛 (ox). Originally it referred to dividing or counting items, with oxen being valuable units of property to count. It came to mean a measurable item or matter, and today serves as a measure word for things, documents, and affairs.