diff --git a/src/lib/index.ts b/src/lib/index.ts
index 791c2b6..dba747c 100644
--- a/src/lib/index.ts
+++ b/src/lib/index.ts
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ import guessLanguage from './tools/guess_language'
 const defaults: IOptions = {
   delimiters: ['\\s+'],
   language: 'english',
+  stopWords: [],
 }
 
 export default function process(text: string, opts?: IOptions): string[] {
diff --git a/src/lib/rake.ts b/src/lib/rake.ts
index eb9f422..54cde45 100644
--- a/src/lib/rake.ts
+++ b/src/lib/rake.ts
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@ import load from './tools/stoplist'
 // can be used to tweak the algorithm or to use it without the defaults
 export interface IOptions {
   delimiters: string[]
-  language: languageName
+  language: languageName,
+  stopWords: [],
 }
 
 // the actual parameters for the RAKE algorithm
@@ -24,7 +25,7 @@ export function rake(params: IParameters): string[] {
 
   // step 2: loop through all words, generate ngrams/stems/phrases/metrics
   const stemmer = new Stemmer(params.language)
-  const stopwords = load(params.language)
+  const stopwords = params.stopWords
   const parser = new Parser(stemmer, stopwords).process(wordArray)
 
   // step 3: build a co-occurence matrix for all words (-> stems)