VMS Help MMS, Description File, Predefined functions, Text operations, WORD  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    $(WORD n,text)

    Returns the n'th word from 'text'. 'n' should be in the range 1 to the
    number of words in the list; when 'n' is not in this range, the result
    is empty.