sic

\sik\

/\sik\/ adv

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“sic” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #11,132) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#11,132
frequency rank, French
6,032
“S” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Tel que cela a été dit ou écrit, sans modification, aussi étrange ou incorrect que cela paraisse. Il s’utilise le plus souvent en italique et entre crochets pour confirmer l’exactitude de la citati...

Corpus desk

Index FR-sic · sic · French

sic · rank #11,132 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #11,132
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 6,032
  • PHOTO-FINISH sceaux

Nearest frequency peer: sceaux (-1 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Voisins de fréquence du confusable « sic »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « sic » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

sic vs st
33% similar
sic vs su
33% similar
sic vs so
33% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for sic
PropertyValue
Headwordsic
LanguageFrench
Part of speechAdverb
IPA\sik\
Letters3
Frequency rank#11,132
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « sic »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).sicse place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'axe est logarithmique: chaque tic marque environ dix fois moins de fréquence. Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « sceaux » (#11,131), « SMIC » (#11,133), « réveillée » (#11,130). Parmi 6,032 lemmes en « S », « sic » est au #11,132. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for sic is neighbouring look-alikes ("st", "su", …), not just typos; it is anadverb pronounced \sik\. Frequency #11,132 among 6,032 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Tel que cela a été dit ou écrit, sans modification, aussi étrange ou incorrect que cela paraisse. Il s’utilise le plus souvent en italique et entre crochets pour confirmer l’exactitude de la citati...".

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for sic, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "st", "su", "so", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is sic, spelled S-I-C.

Definition

  1. 1
    Tel que cela a été dit ou écrit, sans modification, aussi étrange ou incorrect que cela paraisse. Il s’utilise le plus souvent en italique et entre crochets pour confirmer l’exactitude de la citation d’un texte, même dans le cas d’une erreur manifeste, d’une faute de langue ou de propos choquants.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how sic appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. La Belgique est un État fédéral qui se compose des [sic] communautés et des [sic] régions.
  2. Ils préparent les voies du saigneur [sic] de la démocratie, du Bonaparte que nous tient en réserve notre excellent allié et bon petit père le Tsar.

Synonyms

en français dans le texte

This word in other languages

sic(English)sic(Español)sic(Português)

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "sic"?
"sic" is spelled S-I-C. The IPA pronunciation is \sik\.
What does "sic" mean?
As an adverb, "sic" means: Tel que cela a été dit ou écrit, sans modification, aussi étrange ou incorrect que cela paraisse. Il s’utilise le plus souvent en italique et entre crochets pour confirmer l’exactitude de la citati...
What words are commonly confused with "sic"?
"sic" is commonly confused with "st", "su", "so". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "sic"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "sic" is \sik\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "sic" come from?
"sic" is a French word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "sic", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

war#11,153NPD#11,090his#11,230LCI#11,244

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list