I don't understand the question. Why not just capture what was matched, as in (note that the /g regex modifier is not used; it almost certainly does not do what you expect): 

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my $element = 'hi WEED ho';
 if ($element =~ m{ (WEED|DIAL|PIES|KILLD) }xms) {
   my $match = $1;
   print qq{match: '$match'};
   }
"
match: 'WEED'

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In reply to Re: and or statement by AnomalousMonk
in thread and or statement by endsin1m

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