Word.ws English Dictionary

sic

/sɪk/

sic adverb: thus; as written; used to indicate, for example, that text is being quoted as it is from the source.

Adverb

sic (not comparable)

  1. Thus; as written; used to indicate, for example, that text is being quoted as it is from the source.
    • When it is all over they merge and go in a body to visit [...] the Telegraph Office – with plausible expressions of regret and excuses for the mob ‘which’ they say ‘is deplorably ignorant and will not be restrained when its feelings are strongly moved’ – sic, the fact being that the mob’s feelings...1909 January 28, H. E. Wilkie Young, “Notes on the City of Mosul” (despatch No. 4), in Foreign Office, volume 195, number 2308; quoted in Elie Khadouri[e], “Mosul in 1909”, in Middle Eastern Studies...
    • Bolinger, Dwight (1977) ‘Pronoun and repeated nouns.’ Lingua18:1-34 [Quoted sic in Toolan 1990. Neither in Lingua 18, nor in the 1977 volume of that journal.]2003, Monika Fludernik, The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction, Routledge, →ISBN, page 468
  2. (broadly) Used in the manner of scare quotes
    • In the past few months, we in Upstate N.Y. have been subjected to fire bombings, firings, verbal and physical harassment, etc. The list goes on and on. These (sic) Christians are calling for a million marchers and may very well get that many.1979 December 29, Vern Hall-Smith, “Fundamentalists March”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 23, page 5

Verb (1)

sic (third-person singular simple present sics, present participle siccing, simple past and past participle sicced)

  1. To mark with a bracketed sic.
    • The fact is, of course, that the modern reviewer’s taste is not really shocked by half the things he sics or otherwise castigates, but he must find something to say and above all make a slow of purism.1887 May 7, E. Belfort Bax, “On Some Forms of Modern Cant”, in Commonweal

Verb (2)

sic (third-person singular simple present sics, present participle siccing, simple past and past participle sicced)

  1. (transitive) To incite an attack by, especially a dog or dogs.
    • He sicced his dog on me!
    • Phreaks can max-out 911 systems just by siccing a bunch of computer-modems on them in tandem, dialling them over and over until they clog.1992, Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown […] , Bantam Books, →ISBN
  2. (transitive) To set upon; to chase; to attack.
    • Sic ’em, Mitzi.

Noun capitalized: SIC

SIC (plural SICs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of second-in-command.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism, chiefly South Carolina) Initialism of School Improvement Council.

sic meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

sic in Hindi

एस. आई. सी, एस. आइ. सी

sic in Tamil

எஸ். ஐ. சி

sic in Marathi

एस. आय. सी, एस. आई. सी

sic in Urdu

ایس آئی سی
More languagesFewer languages
sic in Bengali
এস. আই. সি
sic in Malayalam
എസ്. ഐ. സി
sic in Kannada
ಎಸ್. ಐ. ಸಿ
sic in Punjabi
ਐੱਸ. ਆਈ. ਸੀ, ਐਸ. ਆਈ. ਸੀ
sic in Gujarati
એસ. આઈ. સી, એસ. આઇ. સી
sic in Odia
ଏସ୍. ଆଇ. ସି, ଏସ. ଆଇ. ସି
sic in Arabic
كَذَا kaḏā
sic in Persian
کذا kazâ

Examples of sic in a sentence

  • Joseph Wright, his predecessor in the chair, called him ‘a firstrate Scholar and a kind of man who will easily make friends’ at Oxford (quoted, sic, in E.M.2006, Christina Scull with Wayne G. Hammond, JRR Tolkien companion & guide, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN:
  • I can’t place the name of it but it has this crazy interview style thing...[all sic]2010, Paul Booth, Digital Fandom: New Media Studies, Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 127:
  • whole bussiness: Quoted sic in George F.2012, Milton J. Bates, The Bark River Chronicles: Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed, Wisconsin Historical Society, →ISBN, page 271:
  • In the posting, Matthews said he wished that, “more blacks [sic] people would look into ancient beliefs of pre Christian Africa.”2019 April 12, Paul P. Murphy and Samira Said, “Louisiana arson suspect expressed disgust with Baptist churches on Facebook”, in CNN...

All 29 example sentences with sic

Forms of sic

Verb
third-person singular presentsics
present participlesiccing
past participlesicced
pastsicced
alternative formsicc
alternative formsick
Noun
pluralSICs

Origin of sic

Learned borrowing from Latin sīc (“thus, so”).

Variant of seek.

Phrases with sic

Words that rhyme with sic

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sic

What does sic mean?
Sic means thus; as written; used to indicate, for example, that text is being quoted as it is from the source.
What is sic in Hindi?
Sic in Hindi is एस. आई. सी, एस. आइ. सी. See Sic meaning in Hindi.
How do you use sic in a sentence?
Joseph Wright, his predecessor in the chair, called him ‘a firstrate Scholar and a kind of man who will easily make friends’ at Oxford (quoted, sic, in E.M.
What part of speech is sic?
Sic can be an adverb, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce sic?
Sic is pronounced /sɪk/.

Words near sic in the dictionary

  1. sibyls
  2. sibynophiid
  3. sibynophiids
  4. sibyrhynchid
  5. sibyrhynchids
  6. sic
  7. sic bo
  8. sic passim
  9. sic pro
  10. sic semper tyrannis
  11. sica

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sic (page history and authors); SIC (page history and authors); sic (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sic (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-sick.ogg, en-us-sick.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.