The Full Form of PSW is Program status word.

The program status word (PSW) is an IBM System/360 architecture and successors control register which performs the function of a status register and program counter in other architectures, and more.

Although certain fields within the PSW may be tested or set by using non-privileged instructions, testing or setting the remaining fields may only be accomplished by using privileged instructions.

Contained within the PSW are the two bit condition code, representing zero, positive, negative, overflow, and similar flags of other architectures’ status registers. Conditional branch instructions test this encoded as a four bit value, with each bit representing a test of one of the four condition code values, 2³ + 2² + 2¹ + 2⁰. (Since IBM uses big-endian bit numbering, mask value 8 selects code 0, mask value 4 selects code 1, mask value 2 selects code 2, and mask value 1 selects code 3.)