diff --git a/sphinx/search/en.py b/sphinx/search/en.py
index 53cd917dc7f..d725e47c27d 100644
--- a/sphinx/search/en.py
+++ b/sphinx/search/en.py
@@ -2,8 +2,9 @@
 
 from typing import Dict
 
+import snowballstemmer
+
 from sphinx.search import SearchLanguage
-from sphinx.util.stemmer import get_stemmer
 
 english_stopwords = set("""
 a  and  are  as  at
@@ -211,7 +212,7 @@ class SearchEnglish(SearchLanguage):
     stopwords = english_stopwords
 
     def init(self, options: Dict) -> None:
-        self.stemmer = get_stemmer()
+        self.stemmer = snowballstemmer.stemmer('english')
 
     def stem(self, word: str) -> str:
-        return self.stemmer.stem(word.lower())
+        return self.stemmer.stemWord(word.lower())