diff --git a/gensim/corpora/dictionary.py b/gensim/corpora/dictionary.py
index c08d4e31b8..9186b527ae 100644
--- a/gensim/corpora/dictionary.py
+++ b/gensim/corpora/dictionary.py
@@ -594,6 +594,52 @@ def merge_with(self, other):
         import gensim.models
         return gensim.models.VocabTransform(old2new)
 
+    def patch_with_special_tokens(self, special_token_dict):
+        """Patch token2id and id2token using a dictionary of special tokens.
+
+
+        **Usecase:** when doing sequence modeling (e.g. named entity recognition), one may  want to specify
+        special tokens that behave differently than others.
+        One example is the "unknown" token, and another is the padding token.
+        It is usual to set the padding token to have index `0`, and patching the dictionary with `{'<PAD>': 0}`
+        would be one way to specify this.
+
+        Parameters
+        ----------
+        special_token_dict : dict of (str, int)
+            dict containing the special tokens as keys and their wanted indices as values.
+
+        Examples
+        --------
+        .. sourcecode:: pycon
+
+            >>> from gensim.corpora import Dictionary
+            >>>
+            >>> corpus = [["máma", "mele", "maso"], ["ema", "má", "máma"]]
+            >>> dct = Dictionary(corpus)
+            >>>
+            >>> special_tokens = {'pad': 0, 'space': 1}
+            >>> print(dct.token2id)
+            {'maso': 0, 'mele': 1, 'máma': 2, 'ema': 3, 'má': 4}
+            >>>
+            >>> dct.patch_with_special_tokens(special_tokens)
+            >>> print(dct.token2id)
+            {'maso': 6, 'mele': 7, 'máma': 2, 'ema': 3, 'má': 4, 'pad': 0, 'space': 1}
+
+        """
+        possible_ids = []
+        for token, idx in special_token_dict.items():
+            if token in self.token2id and self.token2id[token] == idx:
+                continue
+            if token in self.token2id and self.token2id[token] != idx:
+                possible_ids.append(self.token2id[token])
+                del self.token2id[token]
+            old_token = self[idx]
+            self.token2id[token] = idx
+            self.token2id[old_token] = possible_ids.pop() if \
+                                       len(possible_ids) > 0 else len(self.token2id) - 1
+        self.id2token = {}  # Make sure that id2token is updated according to special tokens.
+
     @staticmethod
     def load_from_text(fname):
         """Load a previously stored :class:`~gensim.corpora.dictionary.Dictionary` from a text file.
diff --git a/gensim/test/test_corpora_dictionary.py b/gensim/test/test_corpora_dictionary.py
index a7fb170253..e5ec3221fd 100644
--- a/gensim/test/test_corpora_dictionary.py
+++ b/gensim/test/test_corpora_dictionary.py
@@ -324,6 +324,30 @@ def test_dict_interface(self):
             self.assertTrue(isinstance(d.keys(), list))
             self.assertTrue(isinstance(d.values(), list))
 
+    def test_patch_with_special_tokens(self):
+        special_tokens = {'pad': 0, 'space': 1, 'quake': 3}
+        corpus = [["máma", "mele", "maso"], ["ema", "má", "máma"]]
+        d = Dictionary(corpus)
+        self.assertEqual(len(d.token2id), 5)
+        d.patch_with_special_tokens(special_tokens)
+        self.assertEqual(d.token2id['pad'], 0)
+        self.assertEqual(d.token2id['space'], 1)
+        self.assertEqual(d.token2id['quake'], 3)
+        self.assertEqual(len(d.token2id), 8)
+        self.assertNotIn((0, 1), d.doc2bow(corpus[0]))
+        self.assertIn((0, 1), d.doc2bow(['pad'] + corpus[0]))
+        corpus_with_special_tokens = [["máma", "mele", "maso"], ["ema", "má", "máma", "space"]]
+        d = Dictionary(corpus_with_special_tokens)
+        self.assertEqual(len(d.token2id), 6)
+        self.assertNotEqual(d.token2id['space'], 1)
+        d.patch_with_special_tokens(special_tokens)
+        self.assertEqual(len(d.token2id), 8)
+        self.assertEqual(max(d.token2id.values()), 7)
+        self.assertEqual(d.token2id['space'], 1)
+        self.assertNotIn((1, 1), d.doc2bow(corpus_with_special_tokens[0]))
+        self.assertIn((1, 1), d.doc2bow(corpus_with_special_tokens[1]))
+
+
 # endclass TestDictionary