diff --git a/docs/models.py b/docs/models.py
index 00ed0628ca..07f2174eab 100644
--- a/docs/models.py
+++ b/docs/models.py
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
     TrigramSimilarity,
 )
 from django.core.cache import cache
-from django.db import models, transaction
+from django.db import connection, models, transaction
 from django.db.models import Prefetch, Q
 from django.db.models.fields.json import KeyTextTransform
 from django.utils.functional import cached_property
@@ -174,6 +174,18 @@ def sync_to_db(self, decoded_documents):
                 if line.startswith(f"Disallow: /{self.lang}/{self.release_id}/")
             ]
 
+        language_mapping = TSEARCH_CONFIG_LANGUAGES
+        english = "custom_english"
+        with connection.cursor() as cursor:
+            cursor.execute(
+                "SELECT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM pg_ts_config WHERE cfgname = %s)",
+                [english],
+            )
+            has_custom_english_config = cursor.fetchone()[0]
+
+        if has_custom_english_config:
+            language_mapping["en"] = english
+
         for document in decoded_documents:
             if (
                 "body" not in document
@@ -192,9 +204,7 @@ def sync_to_db(self, decoded_documents):
                 path=document_path,
                 title=html.unescape(strip_tags(document["title"])),
                 metadata=document,
-                config=TSEARCH_CONFIG_LANGUAGES.get(
-                    self.lang[:2], DEFAULT_TEXT_SEARCH_CONFIG
-                ),
+                config=language_mapping.get(self.lang[:2], DEFAULT_TEXT_SEARCH_CONFIG),
             )
         for document in self.documents.all():
             document.metadata["breadcrumbs"] = list(
diff --git a/docs/stopwords/README.md b/docs/stopwords/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..ab24e09a63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/stopwords/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+# Instructions to create a new search dictionary
+
+In this folder, there is `custom_english.stop`.
+
+This copies the [snowball english stop words](https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/master/src/backend/snowball/stopwords/english.stop)
+but removes some stop words such as "through" and "when". This is because these
+terms are also used in Django code.
+
+The file format is a list of words, one per line. Blank lines and trailing
+spaces are ignored, and upper case is folded to lower case, but no other
+processing is done on the file contents.
+
+This file needs to be created in `$SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/custom_english.stop`,
+where `$SHAREDIR` means the PostgreSQL installation's shared-data directory,
+available via `pg_config --sharedir`.
+
+See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch-dictionaries.html
+
+Once the custom stop words file has been created, we can run the following SQL:
+
+```sql
+CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english_custom (
+    TEMPLATE = snowball,
+    Language = english,
+    StopWords = english_custom
+);
+
+CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION public.english_custom (
+   COPY = pg_catalog.english
+);
+
+ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION public.english_custom
+   ALTER MAPPING
+      FOR asciiword, asciihword, hword_asciipart, hword, hword_part, word
+      WITH english_custom;
+```
+
+This should then mean the `english_custom` search dictionary is available.
diff --git a/docs/stopwords/custom_english.stop b/docs/stopwords/custom_english.stop
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..3a7522ef87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/stopwords/custom_english.stop
@@ -0,0 +1,119 @@
+i
+me
+my
+myself
+we
+our
+ours
+ourselves
+you
+your
+yours
+yourself
+yourselves
+he
+him
+his
+himself
+she
+her
+hers
+herself
+it
+its
+itself
+they
+them
+their
+theirs
+themselves
+what
+which
+who
+whom
+this
+that
+these
+those
+am
+is
+are
+was
+were
+be
+been
+being
+have
+has
+had
+having
+do
+does
+did
+doing
+a
+an
+the
+and
+but
+or
+because
+as
+until
+while
+of
+at
+by
+about
+against
+between
+into
+during
+before
+after
+above
+below
+to
+from
+up
+down
+in
+out
+on
+off
+over
+under
+again
+further
+then
+once
+here
+there
+where
+why
+how
+any
+both
+each
+few
+more
+most
+other
+some
+such
+no
+nor
+not
+own
+same
+so
+than
+too
+very
+s
+t
+can
+will
+just
+don
+should