How to search using partial words? Is it me, or can we not search using partial words in Craft CMS? This seems to be the case in the backend when search entry titles or assets, but a client has recently pointed it out on the front-end as well.

For example, we've got an entry title containing the word 'Peruvian' but searching for 'Peru' returns no results, while searching for 'Peruvian' does return a result.
That's because Craft doesn't do fuzzy searching by default.  You'd need to use the wildcard 'Peru*' to match 'Peruvian'.  You can see the full list of supported search syntaxes here: http://buildwithcraft.com/docs/searching

Related, you might want to vote for this feature request: http://feedback.buildwithcraft.com/forums/285221-feature-requests/suggestions/8459443-add-option-to-enable-fuzzy-search-as-default

Update:
As of Craft 2.5, you can enable fuzzy searching by default.