# Finding "Singular" matches when searching a "Plural" term
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [April 4, 2014, 8:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826 "2014-04-04T20:35:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Raja\_Akhtar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Raja_Akhtar)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2014, 8:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/1 "2014-04-04T20:35:21Z")
I am fairly new to Elasticsearch and it's worked brilliantly so far.
I'm stuck in this issue of singular and plural terms, and have done quite a
bit of research on it too.... and everyone's talking "stemmers",
"snowball", "kstem" etc...
From what I understand... if I have stemmer analyzer on a term, I would
have something like:
## term =\> stem
"knock" =\> "knock"
"knocker" =\> "knock"
"knocked" =\> "knock"
"knocking" =\> "knock"
Therefore, if someone searched for "knock", they would see results with
"knocked", "knocking" etc...
Now I can achieve that with nGrams anyway.
What I'm trying to is the opposite.
I want someone to be able to type "knocking"... and still find "knocker",
"knocked" etc...
In my particular use case, I want someone to be able to type "fridges" and
still find "fridge"
How do I achieve this? Can I attached some sort of a stemmer on to the
search\_analyser?
Any help will be great.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@Binh\_Ly\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Binh_Ly_2)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/2 "2014-04-04T20:54:16Z")
You could add the snowball stemmer to your custom analyzer filters and that
would likely work.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/4ab39cd2-25d6-4117-9911-9e08097281ca%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/4ab39cd2-25d6-4117-9911-9e08097281ca%40googlegroups.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@Raja\_Akhtar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Raja_Akhtar)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/3 "2014-04-06T15:45:04Z")
Hi Binh Ly,
I think you misunderstood. I have tried snowball and stemmer in my custom
analysers... but in the example of "fridges", the stem for that is
"fridge". Similarly, the stem for "fridge" is also fridge".
What I want is when someone types "fridges", they should still get all
results with "fridge" in it.
Thanks for the reply 🙂
On Friday, 4 April 2014 21:54:16 UTC+1, Binh Ly wrote:
> You could add the snowball stemmer to your custom analyzer filters and
> that would likely work.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/227c5531-f1c3-414e-b5da-71c7e1e9afba%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/227c5531-f1c3-414e-b5da-71c7e1e9afba%40googlegroups.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/4 "2014-04-06T22:16:38Z")
The transformation you talk about is called baseform reduction. Most
efficient approach is dictionary-based. Stemming is mostly restricted to
algorithmic approaches which do not cover all cases.
You could try to use or setup a new dictionary in my
elasticsearch-baseform-plugin
> **[GitHub - jprante/elasticsearch-analysis-baseform: Baseform lemmatization for...](https://github.com/jprante/elasticsearch-analysis-baseform)**
>
> Baseform lemmatization for Elasticsearch. Contribute to jprante/elasticsearch-analysis-baseform development by creating an account on GitHub.
Jörg
On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Raja Akhtar [raja.akhtar@gmail.com](mailto:raja.akhtar@gmail.com) wrote:
> I am fairly new to Elasticsearch and it's worked brilliantly so far.
>
> I'm stuck in this issue of singular and plural terms, and have done quite
> a bit of research on it too.... and everyone's talking "stemmers",
> "snowball", "kstem" etc...
>
> From what I understand... if I have stemmer analyzer on a term, I would
> have something like:
>
> ## term =\> stem
>
> "knock" =\> "knock"
> "knocker" =\> "knock"
> "knocked" =\> "knock"
> "knocking" =\> "knock"
>
> Therefore, if someone searched for "knock", they would see results with
> "knocked", "knocking" etc...
> Now I can achieve that with nGrams anyway.
>
> What I'm trying to is the opposite.
>
> I want someone to be able to type "knocking"... and still find "knocker",
> "knocked" etc...
>
> In my particular use case, I want someone to be able to type "fridges" and
> still find "fridge"
>
> How do I achieve this? Can I attached some sort of a stemmer on to the
> search\_analyser?
> Any help will be great.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "elasticsearch" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com)[https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/faa3a880-ed7f-4709-8e00-e8a63278af01%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)
> .
> For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAKdsXoGjT7iaypR8dqhU%3DB%2B0ApPqMDYNNkSKFwP%3D346Y3WmLcA%40mail.gmail.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAKdsXoGjT7iaypR8dqhU%3DB%2B0ApPqMDYNNkSKFwP%3D346Y3WmLcA%40mail.gmail.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@roytmana](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roytmana)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2014, 2:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/5 "2014-04-07T02:24:37Z")
Hi Jörg,
Is release of your plugin for ES 1.0.x and 1.1.x available?
How is performance comparing to kstem?
Thanks
Alex
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/3ba11e28-e2ad-409a-91cc-aa101396aa66%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/3ba11e28-e2ad-409a-91cc-aa101396aa66%40googlegroups.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/finding-singular-matches-when-searching-a-plural-term/16826/6 "2017-07-06T01:37:54Z")