Get Text On Hover

I wonder if anyone could tell me how to get a single word that the mouse is hovering over. I know how to do this in a text box, by using SendMessage API and EM_CHARFROMPOS, and then selecting characters until I hit a space; however, this does not work for controls outside of the application form. I guess some API should do the trick but I'm not sure. I think this should be possible to do, because I have seen a program written in C++ that does it exactly.
Maybe some VB genius out there can enlighten me?
Many thanks in advance to anyone who can be bothered to reply and thanks to everyone else who has bothered to read this far :-)