Word stemming is when a search engine resolves a word to its root form and then returns variations of the word.
For example, search for one of these and return the rest:
- run, ran runner, running, runs
- fish, fishes, fisher, fishing
SharePoint 2013 Word Stemming
SharePoint 2013 only does "stemming" on singulars and plurals. So all we get for "run" is "runs" and for "fish" is "fishes". The exact stemming depends on the language.
SharePoint 2007 and 2010 did support an expanded form of word stemming, but you had to enable it in the search results web parts.
So what do we do?
Search using "OR".
fish OR fishing OR fisher
run OR ran OR running OR runs
Remember that the Boolean operators like "OR" must be typed in upper case and that mixtures of AND and OR usually will need parentheses.
race AND (run OR ran OR running OR runs)