January 27, 1997

sic

Where does the word "sicced" as in "I sicced my dog on him" come from? Are there any other meanings besides the one which applies to dogs?

Sic in this sense is originally a dialectal pronunciation of seek. It is first attested in the middle of the nineteenth century.

This word sic has only three meanings, and they're closely related. The first is 'to attack', usually used as an imperative ("Sic 'em!") to a dog. The second is 'to incite (a dog) to attack' ("I sicced my dog on him"). The third sense is the figurative use of sic to mean 'to cause to pursue', as in "I sicced my lawyer on him."

Though these are the only meanings of this word sic, there are two other unrelated sics. One is a Scottish adjective meaning 'such', which you'd normally only encounter when reading Scottish literature. It's a variant of "such."

The other is the Latin word sic, which means 'thus'. It is almost always used within brackets to indicate that a previous word or phrase that seems erroneous or unexpected has been written intentionally or is exactly quoting the way something was written. Examples: "I bought the new book by bell hooks [sic]," where the "sic" indicates that the use of lowercase letters for a person's name is not accidental (in this case because bell hooks prefers not to use capital letters), or "The magazine wrote an article about 'the countdown to the next millenium' [sic]," where the "sic" indicates that the magazine, not the person writing, misspelt "millennium."