Yes, Slack has the ability to hyperlink words, as long as Format messages with markup is unchecked under Preferences > Advanced to show the formatting toolbar. According to the documentation, start out with one of these:
Select text, then click the link icon in the formatting toolbar
Select text, then press ⌘ShiftU on Mac or CtrlShiftU on Windows/Linux.
Then do this:
Copy the link you’d like to share and paste it in the empty field under Link, then click Save.
What follows is how this answer used to read when it first became so famous. It was correct until about February 2020.
No.
As a couple of commenters said, and as the Slack documentation says:
Note: It’s not possible to hyperlink words in a Slack message.
In addition to the ⌘ShiftU/CtrlShiftU solution, you can also add a link quickly by doing the following:
Copy a URL to the clipboard
Select the text in a slack message you are writing that you want to be a link
Press ⌘V on Mac or CtrlV
I couldn’t find it documented anywhere, but it works, and seems very handy.