“sic” is often used to indicate that a quote has been rendered exactly. It is usually placed after a misspelled word to indicate that it was the original writer, not the current one, who can’t spell. I thought that it stood for “Spelling Is Contained” or something like that. I was looking for the exact words involved in the acronym, but m-w.com says “Etymology: Latin, so, thus – more at SO” (and So says “Etymology: Middle English, from Old English swA; akin to Old High German sO so, Latin sic so, thus, si if, Greek hOs so, thus, Latin suus one’s own – more at SUICIDE”)
So, (ha) is “sic”, officially or unofficially, an acronym? And if it is unofficially, what does it stand for?
In other words, it’s a shortened version of “it was thus in the original,” which is the editor’s way of saying he noticed the mistake, but he didn’t make it.
I think it’s far to say from Latin, no? Now that it’s English, it has to have come from somewhere.
Really, I’m not picking nits; there’s a time when a whole heck of a lot of English words had come from somewhere. At some point we stopped italicizing them in printed text, which seems to kind of be a tacit admission of “officialness” in modern English. For example I would italicize realpolitik were I to use it in a sentence. At what point do we accept a foreign word as English? Is “pronto” okay but we’re still waiting on “amigo”?
Of course, it’s clearly not wrong to say “sic” is Latin, either, since a thing is what it is, and in this case, is Latin, but also from Latin.
Given the OP’s confusion over the etymology, I think it’s better to be definite: sic is a Latin word. Besides, I don’t think it’s really become an English word anyway; it’s used excusively as an editorial tool, and obviously never in speech.
In my experience as a lawyer, sic is most often used to say, I am smarter than the idiot who wrote this, and am going to make fun them under the deniable guise of accuracy. I is perfectly acceptable legal usage to correct spelling/grammar quoted material within brackets.
In fact, direct quotes are not needed nearly as often as they are used. At least in the law I practice. Paraphrases generally read better. Multiple and lenthy direct quotes are most often the sign of a lazy writer.
bobk2 Just saw the Seinfeld rerun where crazy Joe Davola said the Wilkes quote. Was amused to hear Jerry mistranslate it as “death to tyrants” (sic).
I was actually taught by my ninth grade English teacher that it meant “Spelling Incorrect”. I continued to believe this until today.
And I took two years of Latin and never noticed!
