# Dictionary word vs characters question

**URL:** <https://community.hanzihero.com/t/dictionary-word-vs-characters-question/4895>\
**Category:** HanziHero\
**Created:** [February 28, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/dictionary-word-vs-characters-question/4895 "2025-02-28T20:15:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DreadZombie](https://community-cdn.hanzihero.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@DreadZombie](https://community.hanzihero.com/u/DreadZombie)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/dictionary-word-vs-characters-question/4895/1 "2025-02-28T20:15:45Z")

</div>

Hi. I’m still very early in my progression, so I don’t want to experiment too much and mess up my review lists, but I have the following question:  
Suppose there is a word, eg 石头 (shi2tou) that is not in the word list, but both characters are in the character list. If you add it for review from the dictionary, will the relevant characters be added as well, or do you have to manually do it so that you ensure you learn the characters before the word (assuming you haven’t already of course)?  
Thanks so much!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![phil](https://community-cdn.hanzihero.com/user_avatar/community.hanzihero.com/phil/32/6_2.png) [@phil](https://community.hanzihero.com/u/phil)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 3:28am UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/dictionary-word-vs-characters-question/4895/2 "2025-03-01T03:28:53Z")

</div>

The default behavior is that when you prioritize a dictionary item, it will show up in your lessons despite not knowing the characters.

If you want to to change it so you must learn the characters before learning the dictionary item, you can enable [Dictionary Unlocking](https://hanzihero.com/docs/dictionary-unlocking). This makes it so you must learn the characters first for it to unlock 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DreadZombie](https://community-cdn.hanzihero.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/3be4f8/32.png) [@DreadZombie](https://community.hanzihero.com/u/DreadZombie)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 3:45am UTC](https://community.hanzihero.com/t/dictionary-word-vs-characters-question/4895/3 "2025-03-01T03:45:23Z")

</div>

Awesome, thanks so much!