"sic" definition, meaning, and origin

Adverb

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...
- 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...
- 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. Wright, The Life of Joseph Wright (1932), p. 483). - 2006,...
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...

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

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, →ISBN:
- I was interviewing the victims of a harebrained scheme to sic contract killers on an innocent woman - 2019, Brian Merchant, “Click Here to Kill: The dark world of online murder markets”, in Harper’s Magazine, volume...
To set upon; to chase; to attack.
- Sic ’em, Mitzi.

Variant of seek.

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....