taking input of a string word by word

Put the line in a stringstream and extract word by word back:

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    string t;
    getline(cin,t);

    istringstream iss(t);
    string word;
    while(iss >> word) {
        /* do stuff with word */
    }
}

Of course, you can just skip the getline part and read word by word from cin directly.

And here you can read why is using namespace std considered bad practice.