Art & MusicGreek → English
Lyric
/ˈlɪrɪk/adjective
Expressing personal feeling in a songlike way; as a noun, the words of a song.
The Greek roots
λύρα
lýra
lyre
Literally: “of the lyre”
Follow a root:λύρα3 words
The story of the word
Lyrikós meant sung to the lyre, and it sorted Greek poetry into kinds: not narrated like epic, not acted like drama, but sung by one voice or a chorus over strings. Sappho and Pindar are lyric poets in that literal sense, with the instrument in the room. The words of a popular song became the lyrics only in the late nineteenth century, by which time the lyre had been out of use for roughly two thousand years.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 1580s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
lyrelyricallyricist
In a sentence
He writes the tune first and fits the lyrics afterwards.
The second act opens with a long lyric passage for solo cello.