Thanks AKostur, if the vCPU information had used the words "at most" or "total" then it would have been clear. The actual text is
vCPU Entitlement
The number of virtual CPUs that may be allocated to each VM when using virtual symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)
This is in the context of a column that begins with "Per 1 CPU" and so seems ambiguous to me. I'd expect an important restriction like this to be clear. e.g. "vCPU Entitlement per host"
Anyhow, thanks for your response. I since found at Compare VMware vSphere Kits for Virtualization that the reference to "per CPU" is gone and this convinces me that the VSphere standard really does only support a maximum of 8 vCPU per host.
Diarmuid
PS Enterprise Plus license is 64 vCPU, Enterprise is 32 vCPU.