Can I make Search only search on whole words

I have a problem – the site has products that cover shirts, pants, hats, shoes

The issue is that a search will be entered to find a Hat. Categories is sitting at the default of All Categories. So that is all that is entered – hat

What happens though is not only are hats displayed, but some other products as well like shirts and pants.

The reason ? – because somewhere in the description might be the word – what
or other similar word containing the letters hat
This is really annoying and creating a lot of issues for the owner of the site.

Is there some way of preventing the Search option from pulling up just anything at all that happens to have some letters somewhere in some word ??

thanks