What does [sic] mean and whats a shrink?

Question

The two questions are unrelated but I'm still curious. I see the work [sic] while going through text or books or something sometimes. Whats it mean. And whats a shrink? I hear people talk about it sometimes.

Answer 1

Most of the definitions for shrink above are correct, it is a psychiatrist (note, not a psychologist, these are two different fields of science).

[sic] : Whilst this can be used to note where a mistake has been made (often in a comical way) and has been transcribed exactly as was (such as when quoting somebody else's amusing malapropism), more often than not in modern creative writing, it is used to draw attention to a deliberate mistake.

eg. The people of the Middle-East will not soon forget the aid they have received from the Western Allies. Tanks [sic] for the memory!

Not the best example, but couldn't come up with a better one at short notice. I hope this helps anyway.

Answer 2

[sic] means it's not my mistake but I'm supposed to transcribe this as it is presented. For example, if you are typing a quote from another person, and that person is an idiot, you may type something like this: "He said your [sic] a fool." Obviously, the correct word should have been "you're" in that last sentence, and the typist just wanted to point out that he or she is not the one that is grammatically challenged.

A shrink is a psychiatrist. "Head-shrinker" was the common term, shortened to "shrink."

Answer 3

This is an interesting subject, and one that I have actually thought about extensively. Your problem, here, is in assuming that the Atheist assumption is similar to the religious general assumption, which is that the universe was created quickly. Atheists, or at least the smart, non-dogmatic ones, don't usually believe exclusively in the "Big Bang," as it is called, and those that actually think about these things realize how implausible it seems, for several reasons, including the lack of a creator. We seem to have general evidence that we are moving away from everything else, as well as radiation evidence of a "Big Bang," but this could have been caused by a general nearby cataclysm, or, interestingly, of the universe compressing and missing its "central point"; Kind of like how we use Jupiter to sling deep-space satellites into space. What I believe does have a certain philosophical feel to it, in that it incorporates the third state of being, information (the first two being matter and energy, with the progression from first to last being correspondent to the progression from least to most subtle). However, there is no non-scientific way of putting this, but to leave the important bits out. Much more likely is the "Quantum Field" or Field Fluctuation theory, which is as follows. The universe began as nothing, except for the information required to describe the universe in its empty form. Because information, by its nature, interacts, however, eventually a sort of fractal space formed, causing the sudden logical existence of matter over time. This is a very short explanation, free of very much background and therefore seemingly illogical and incomplete. Frankly, though, I'm not in a mood to describe the whole of it, as I am turning into bed soon. However, good reading on this includes many texts on quantum theory in the last twenty years, wit perhaps the best for the uninitiated being "Programming the Universe," by Seth Loyd, which is pretty nearly everything you might want to know about information theory without actually making your life revolve around quantum mechanics and the study thereof (in other words, for beginners). Anyway, this explanation has the benefit of having no necessary "pre-universe," because the nature of time means that the universe might have happened infinite times in the future and the past, but without mass and therefore gravity, time ceases to exist, and due to entropy the universe will eventually return to complete uniformity and therefore lack of gravity and time, our universe has a finite beginning and end. I have not explained this very well, as I've said, and the simplest that I've seen it explained is in "Programming the Universe."

Answer 4

The term (sic) is used after a word is spelled incorrectly, but is noted "as is" in the original quoted text.
And a shrink is a psychiatrist.

Answer 5

sic is derived form Latin meaning such. It refers to an editors acknowlegement of an error, but they wish to leave it in the document to convey the real information.
A shrink is common name given to a pyschiatrist.

Answer 6

I'm quite sure it means spelling incorrect. A shrink is a psychiatrist

Answer 7

sic means "such"

A shrink is a psychologist/psychiatrist

Answer 8

to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error.


A shrink is a psychologist.

Answer 9

"Sic" is latin for "thus". A shrink is a psychiatrist or psychologist. It's short for "headshrinker".

Answer 10

sic - right it is spelling incorrect

shrink - is a psychologist.