lyric
n. countablen. the words of a song. You use this to talk about what a singer is saying or the story they are telling in their music.
n. the words of a song, typically written in a rhythmic or rhyming style. Often used in the plural form to refer to the complete text of a musical composition.
I can never remember the lyric to this song.
The singer spent months writing every lyric to ensure the album told a personal story about her childhood.
While the melody is undeniably catchy, it is the poetic depth of the lyric that elevates the track from a simple pop tune to a profound social commentary.
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 since the 1950s for many writers. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song by authorities such as Alec Wilder, Robert Gottlieb, and Stephen Sondheim. However, the singular form is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics.
Commonly used in the plural ('lyrics') when referring to the entire set of words in a song.
I like the lyrics of this poemI like the words of this poem'Lyric' specifically refers to song words; for poetry, use 'lines' or 'words' unless referring to the specific genre of lyric poetry.