diff --git a/sphinx/search/__init__.py b/sphinx/search/__init__.py
index 5413957a0e4..4fd566eeb64 100644
--- a/sphinx/search/__init__.py
+++ b/sphinx/search/__init__.py
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ def word_filter(self, word: str) -> bool:
             len(word) == 0 or not (
                 ((len(word) < 3) and (12353 < ord(word[0]) < 12436)) or
                 (ord(word[0]) < 256 and (
-                    len(word) < 3 or word in self.stopwords
+                    word in self.stopwords
                 ))))
 
 
diff --git a/tests/test_search.py b/tests/test_search.py
index a4cefbc67f9..72eb39a0ae2 100644
--- a/tests/test_search.py
+++ b/tests/test_search.py
@@ -143,6 +143,7 @@ def test_IndexBuilder():
     assert index._titles == {'docname': 'title', 'docname2': 'title2'}
     assert index._filenames == {'docname': 'filename', 'docname2': 'filename2'}
     assert index._mapping == {
+        'ar': {'docname', 'docname2'},
         'fermion': {'docname', 'docname2'},
         'comment': {'docname', 'docname2'},
         'non': {'docname', 'docname2'},
@@ -161,7 +162,8 @@ def test_IndexBuilder():
         'objects': {'': {'objdispname': (0, 0, 1, '#anchor')}},
         'objnames': {0: ('dummy', 'objtype', 'objtype')},
         'objtypes': {0: 'dummy:objtype'},
-        'terms': {'comment': [0, 1],
+        'terms': {'ar': [0, 1],
+                  'comment': [0, 1],
                   'fermion': [0, 1],
                   'index': [0, 1],
                   'non': [0, 1],
@@ -197,6 +199,7 @@ def test_IndexBuilder():
     assert index._titles == {'docname2': 'title2'}
     assert index._filenames == {'docname2': 'filename2'}
     assert index._mapping == {
+        'ar': {'docname2'},
         'fermion': {'docname2'},
         'comment': {'docname2'},
         'non': {'docname2'},
@@ -215,7 +218,8 @@ def test_IndexBuilder():
         'objects': {},
         'objnames': {0: ('dummy', 'objtype', 'objtype')},
         'objtypes': {0: 'dummy:objtype'},
-        'terms': {'comment': 0,
+        'terms': {'ar': 0,
+                  'comment': 0,
                   'fermion': 0,
                   'index': 0,
                   'non': 0,
@@ -261,4 +265,4 @@ def test_nosearch(app):
     assert index['docnames'] == ['index', 'nosearch', 'tocitem']
     assert 'latex' not in index['terms']
     assert 'zfs' in index['terms']
-    assert index['terms']['zfs'] == 0  # zfs on nosearch.rst is not registered to index
+    assert index['terms']['zfs'] == []  # zfs on nosearch.rst is not registered to index