How can I exclude one word with grep?

You can do it using -v (for --invert-match) option of grep as:

grep -v "unwanted_word" file | grep XXXXXXXX

grep -v "unwanted_word" file will filter the lines that have the unwanted_word and grep XXXXXXXX will list only lines with pattern XXXXXXXX.

EDIT:

From your comment it looks like you want to list all lines without the unwanted_word. In that case all you need is:

grep -v 'unwanted_word' file

I understood the question as "How do I match a word but exclude another", for which one solution is two greps in series: First grep finding the wanted "word1", second grep excluding "word2":

grep "word1" | grep -v "word2"

In my case: I need to differentiate between "plot" and "#plot" which grep's "word" option won't do ("#" not being a alphanumerical).

Hope this helps.