About stemming

The stemming feature broadens search results to include word roots and word derivations.

Stemming is intended to allow words with a common root form (such as the singular and plural forms of nouns) to be considered interchangeable in search operations. For example, search results for the word "shirt" will include the derivation "shirts," while a search for "shirts" will also include its word root "shirt."

Stemming equivalences are strictly two-way (that is, all-to-all). For example, a search for the singular form of a noun (such as "child") will also return matches for the plural form "children." Likewise, a search for "children" will return matches for "child" and "children." Stemmed words, therefore, are considered equivalent and interchangeable for all search operations.

In contrast, the thesaurus feature supports one-way mappings in addition to two-way mappings.