Select whole words using single finger tap gesture If you double click a word to select it, and keep the mouse held down, you go it starts word selection mode, meaning it will select whole words as you move the mouse over them.

This only works when using the physical click on the trackpad. The problem is that I want the same behavior using a tap (i.e. the One Finger Tap to Click feature is enabled). When I try to use a tap, though, it goes into character selection mode rather than word selection.

Is there ant way to perform word selection using tap gestures on a trackpad?
Yep!
You double-tap and lift off to select the word.  Then double-tap the selected word and start dragging immediately keeping your finger down.  It's actually kind of tricky to get to work without dragging the word but once you get it a couple of times it gets easier.
Here's an explanation on how to do it also from macworld.com, same as above:

To select text (and this works in nearly any program that involves
text) on a word-by-word basis, do a double-click-and-hold before you
start dragging, instead of a single click. As you move the mouse along
now, you’ll see that entire words are added to your selection as soon
as the cursor touches their first character. So if you’ve got a fair
bit of text to select, but still need precision, this is a pretty
quick way to get it done.

Here are my trackpad settings