The Stemming feature broadens search results to include root words and variants of root words.
Stemming enables words with a common root (such as the singular and plural forms of nouns) to be used interchangeably by searches. For example, through stemming, search results for the word shirt will include the plural form shirts, while a search for shirts will include the singular form shirt.
Stemming equivalences are defined among variant forms of the same word, but not among different words, even when these are synonymous. For example, stemming enables the variant forms automobile and automobiles to be considered equivalent, but not to define an equivalence between synonymous words such as vehicle and automobile. Equivalences between different words with the same or similar meanings are defined by Thesaurus.
Stemming equivalences are strictly two-way (that is, all-to-all). For example, if there is a stemming entry for the word truck, then searches for truck will always return matches for both the singular form (truck) and its plural form (trucks), and searches for trucks will also return matches for truck.
In contrast, the Thesaurus feature supports one-way mappings in addition to two-way mappings. For more information, see About the Thesaurus feature.
Note
The MDEX Engine supports stemming for multiple languages. For details about stemming and non-English data, refer to the Oracle Commerce Internationalization Guide.
