To find the next occurrence of the word on which the cursor currently lies, you can use the Ctrl-A command. This command first determines the cursor position, then finds the word boundaries to the left and the right of the cursor, and then copies the word under the cursor into a buffer. Afterwards, this buffer is used to generate a search command for the next occurrence of the word on which the cursor was.
One use of this command is to find where in a program a certain variable or label is defined or used or whether a name has been used already. Once the user is adapted (or addicted) to it, the Ctrl-A command can become one of the main ways to move through a file. This way motion is based on correlation rather than on distance.