Stopwords are those words which are judged to be so common in an online system that they have little information value. Thus, in order to enhance system performance for the online searcher, stopwords are not indexed, and therefore are not searchable. In practical terms, this means that the THOMAS searcher would not get any results back from a search on a phrase such as "to be or not to be," since each of those words is a stopword in THOMAS.

The stopword list used by the InQuery search system in THOMAS comprises the following words:

a, about, above, across, adj, after, afterwards, again, against, albeit, all, almost, alone, along, already, also, although, always, among, amongst, an, and, another, any, anyhow, anyone, anything, anywhere, are, around, as, at

be, became, because, become, becomes, becoming, been, before, beforehand, behind, being, below, beside, besides, between, beyond, both, but, by

can, cannot, co, could

down, during

each, eg, either, else, elsewhere, enough, etc, even, ever, every, everyone, everything, everywhere, except

few, first, for, former, formerly, from, further

had, has, have, he, hence, her, here, hereafter, hereby, herein, hereupon, hers, herself, him, himself, his, how, however

ie, if, in, inc, indeed, into, is, it, its, itself

last, latter, latterly, least, less, ltd

many, may, me, meanwhile, might, more, moreover, most, mostly, much, must, my, myself

namely, neither, never, nevertheless, next, no, nobody, none, noone, nor, not, nothing, now, nowhere

of, off, often, on, once one, only, onto, or, other, others, otherwise, our, ours, ourselves, out, over, own

per, perhaps

rather

same, seem, seemed, seeming, seems, several, she, should, since, so, some, somehow, someone, something, sometime, sometimes, somewhere, still, such

than, that, the, their, them, themselves, then, thence, there, thereafter, thereby, therefor, therein, thereupon, these, they, this, those, though, through, throughout, thru, thus, to, together, too, toward, towards

under, until, up, upon, us

very, via

was, we, well, were, what, whatever, whatsoever, when, whence, whenever, whensoever, where, whereafter, whereas, whereat, whereby, wherefrom, wherein, whereinto, whereof, whereon, whereto, whereunto, whereupon, wherever, wherewith, whether, which, whichever, whichsoever, while, whilst, whither, who, whoever, whole, whom, whomever, whomsoever, whose, whosoever, why, will, with, within, without, would

yet, you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves

Last Update Wed Oct 21 1998