'artware' originates from English, specifically a coinage combining 'art' and the combining form '-ware' (as in 'software'/'hardware'), where 'art' meant 'creative practice' and '-ware' meant 'goods, products, or items (particularly kinds of manufactured goods or software)'.

'artware' is a late 20th-century coinage that developed by analogy with compounds like 'software' and 'hardware' (the element '-ware' ultimately traces back to Old English 'waru' meaning 'goods'). The term gained use in discussions of digital and software-based art from the 1980s–1990s onward.

Initially coined to label goods or products related to art by analogy with other '-ware' compounds, it evolved to specifically denote software created as art or used primarily for artistic creation; the sense stabilized around 'software-as-art' and creative tools by artists.