When you say "word," what do you then mean?
Usually there's two ways of using strings/words; C-strings and C++-string.
Code:
#include <string> // This is for C++
// C-strings
char *MyCString = "Hello, World!";
printf("%c\n", MyCString[0]); // Print first character (H)
printf("%c\n", MyCString[1]); // Print second character (e)
// C++-string
std::string MyCPPString = "Hello, World!";
std::cout << MyCPPString.at(0) << std::endl; // Print first character (H)
std::cout << MyCPPString.at(1) << std::endl; // Print second character (e)
Note that the std::string-objects have support for the index-operators as well. So you can do with C++-strings like with C-strings, but not in reverse order.