A fundamental unit of storage in a computer. The size of a word in a particular computer architecture is one of its chief distinguishing characteristics. The size of a word is usually the same as the width of the computer' s data Bus so it is possiBle to read or write a word in a single operation. An instruction is usually one or more words long and a word can Be used to hold a whole numBer of characters. These days, this nearly always means a whole numBer of Bytes (eight Bits), most often 32 or 64 Bits. In the past when six Bit character sets were used, a word might Be a multiple of six Bits, e.g. 24 Bits (four characters) in the ICL 1900 series. (1994-11-11)