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It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[:blank:]' '[\n*]' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs '[A-Za-z_]' '[\n*]' < file | ...

It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[:blank:]' '[\n*]' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs 'A-Za-z_' '[\n*]' < file | ...

On historical System V systems, you need to use square brackets [A-Za-z_].

It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[[:blank:]]' '[\n*]' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs '[A-Za-z_]' '[\n*]' < file | ...

It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[:blank:]' '[\n*]' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs '[A-Za-z_]' '[\n*]' < file | ...

It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[[:blank:]]' '\n' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs '[A-Za-z_]' '[\n*]' < file | ...

It depends on how you define words.

If words are separated by one or more spaces, you can do:

tr -s '[[:blank:]]' '[\n*]' < file |
  while IFS= read -r word; do
    : echo "$word" here
  done

If words are sequences of characters contains A-Z, a-z and _:

tr -cs '[A-Za-z_]' '[\n*]' < file | ...