diff --git a/code/services-core/search-service/src/main/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QuerySearchTermsAccumulator.java b/code/services-core/search-service/src/main/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QuerySearchTermsAccumulator.java
index 6fcb62c20..da309362f 100644
--- a/code/services-core/search-service/src/main/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QuerySearchTermsAccumulator.java
+++ b/code/services-core/search-service/src/main/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QuerySearchTermsAccumulator.java
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 package nu.marginalia.search.query;
 
 import nu.marginalia.index.client.model.query.SearchSubquery;
+import nu.marginalia.language.WordPatterns;
 import nu.marginalia.query_parser.token.Token;
 import nu.marginalia.query_parser.token.TokenVisitor;
 import nu.marginalia.search.model.SearchProfile;
@@ -46,7 +47,15 @@ public void onLiteralTerm(Token token) {
     @Override
     public void onQuotTerm(Token token) {
         String[] parts = token.str.split("_");
-        if (parts.length > 1) {
+
+        // HACK (2023-05-02 vlofgren)
+        //
+        // Checking for stop words here is a bit of a stop-gap to fix the issue of stop words being
+        // required in the query (which is a problem because they are not indexed). How to do this
+        // in a clean way is a bit of an open problem that may not get resolved until query-parsing is
+        // improved.
+
+        if (parts.length > 1 && !anyPartIsStopWord(parts)) {
             // Prefer that the actual n-gram is present
             searchTermsAdvice.add(token.str);
 
@@ -63,6 +72,15 @@ public void onQuotTerm(Token token) {
         }
     }
 
+    private boolean anyPartIsStopWord(String[] parts) {
+        for (String part : parts) {
+            if (WordPatterns.isStopWord(part)) {
+                return true;
+            }
+        }
+        return false;
+    }
+
     @Override
     public void onExcludeTerm(Token token) {
         searchTermsExclude.add(token.str);
diff --git a/code/services-core/search-service/src/test/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QueryFactoryTest.java b/code/services-core/search-service/src/test/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QueryFactoryTest.java
index 843771548..d2d453375 100644
--- a/code/services-core/search-service/src/test/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QueryFactoryTest.java
+++ b/code/services-core/search-service/src/test/java/nu/marginalia/search/query/QueryFactoryTest.java
@@ -95,6 +95,25 @@ public void testParseSizeGt() {
         assertEquals(2000, size.value());
     }
 
+    @Test
+    public void testQuotedStopwords() {
+        {
+            // the is a stopword, so it should generate an ngram search term
+            var specs = parseAndGetSpecs("\"the shining\"");
+            assertEquals(List.of("the_shining"), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermsInclude);
+            assertEquals(List.of(), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermsAdvice);
+            assertEquals(List.of(), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermCoherences);
+        }
+
+        {
+            // tde isn't a stopword, so we should get the normal behavior
+            var specs = parseAndGetSpecs("\"tde shining\"");
+            assertEquals(List.of("tde", "shining"), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermsInclude);
+            assertEquals(List.of("tde_shining"), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermsAdvice);
+            assertEquals(List.of(List.of("tde", "shining")), specs.subqueries.iterator().next().searchTermCoherences);
+        }
+    }
+
 
     @Test
     public void testParseQualityEq() {