Somewhen in the past, drj was completely right, word meant the machine's "native" bit width, i.e. registers would always contain a word. But I think the trend to call 16 bits a word always, even outside of the now quite rare 16-bit beasts, is definitely there. This may be due to the wintel juggernaut, but it may also be due to there being a need to call 16 bits (and 32 bits, etc.) something. Word is certainly not the best choice, but most people that are not chip designers seem to find it adequate.
Despite the dominance of Wintel I still couldn't find enough evidence to support the case for word usually meaning 16 bits (for example count "16 bit word" versus "32 bit word" on altavista). So I deleted that claim from the head page. I can believe that amongst programmers that have only been exposed to wintel boxes word usually means 16 bits, but that not what was claimed. I don't really want to fight a battle over this but I would like some evidence. --drj
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