Add a document to the collection like this: { "name" : "Physical" , "index" : true , "code" : "..." , "description" : "This Thang has physical presence (position, size, shape)." , "system" : "physics" , } Add an index to the system with values: {index: 1, name: 'text', description: 'text', system: 'text'} that is sparse. The one in my system looks like this: { "v" : 1, "key" : { "index" : 1, "_fts" : "text" , "_ftsx" : 1 }, "ns" : "coco.level.components" , "name" : "search index" , "sparse" : true , "background" : true , "safe" : null , "weights" : { "description" : 1, "name" : 1, "system" : 1 }, "default_language" : "english" , "language_override" : "language" , "textIndexVersion" : 1 } Now from the client, run searches like: db.level.components.runCommand( 'text' , {search: 'physical' , filter: {index: true }}) // fail db.level.components.runCommand( 'text' , {search: 'presence' , filter: {index: true }}) // fail db.level.components.runCommand( 'text' , {search: 'size' , filter: {index: true }}) // hit db.level.components.runCommand( 'text' , {search: 'physics' , filter: {index: true }}) // fail Each of the failures, when I checked the results, had stemmed the search term. So 'physics' and 'physical' became 'physic', 'presence' became 'presenc'. 'size' stayed the same, and hit the sample. Update the document to have 'presenc' instead of 'presence', and then search for 'presence', and the search is success. So if the document text is stemmed manually, it seems, the search works. I don't know if the system is failing to stem the words before indexing them, but that's what it looks like based on these tests.