The Rice University Neologisms Database

Etymology : “hardcode” is from “hard” and “code,” with “hard” referring to the way that data becomes set in the source file, rather than being something for the user to input. “Hard” comes from the Old English “heard,” meaning “solid,” which comes from the Proto-Germanic “*hardu-,” from the PIE “*kortu-,” from the root “*kar-” or “ker-,” meaning “hard.” “Code,” in relation to programming, comes from “code” meaning “systematic compilation of laws” from the French “code” from the Latin “codex.”