lyric

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The words of a song.

   The lyric in the third line doesn't quite rhyme.

2. 2
   noun

   A short poem that expresses personal feelings, often like a song.

   She published a small collection of lyrics about love and loss.

3. 3
   adj

   Expressing strong personal emotion, especially in poetry or music.

   He admired the lyric beauty of her early poems.

From French lyrique, or its source, Latin lyricus, from Ancient Greek λυρικός (lurikós), from λύρα (lúra, “lyre”). Its English equivalent would be lyre + -ic. The original Greek sense of "lyric poetry"—"poetry accompanied by the lyre" i.e. "words set to music"—eventually led to its use as "lyrics", first attested in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Stainer and Barrett used the word as a singular substantive: "Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music and sung". By the 1930s, the present use of the plurale tantum "lyrics" had begun; it has been standard sin…

Topics