lyric
/ˈlɪrɪk
/adjective
1(Of poetry) expressing the writer’s emotions, usually briefly and in stanzas or recognized forms: lyric poems of extraordinary beauty...
- Thus, in a number of discussions, I may have shown a little too much brain to one of my tennis partners, a writer of lyric poetry.
- Granted, the poets had the advantage of including among their number Matt Miller, an aspiring writer of lyric verse who happened to have been a defensive starter at Yale five years ago.
- For both writers, charm is more than music: it signifies the power of truthful expression in lyric poetry and polemical prose.
Synonyms
melodic, songlike, musical, melodious, lyrical, rhapsodic, poetic;
expressive, emotional, deeply felt, personal, subjective, passionate
1.1Denoting a writer of lyric poetry: the lyric poets of Ancient Greece...
- Fitzgerald, a fine lyric poet, neglected today, was able to accommodate his gifts to the buoyancy and basic serenity of the Odyssey.
- I had heard a good deal about Holderlin, that he was the great nineteenth - century lyric poet of Germany.
- Famed in his day as patriot, satirist, and foe to tyranny, Marvell was virtually unknown as a lyric poet.
2(Of a singing voice) using a light register: a lyric soprano with a light, clear timbre...
- In the concluding ‘Wunderhorn’ song, Ying Huang sang with musicality and charm in a soaring lyric soprano voice.
- As we began working with the keys in which her songs were written, she simply poked around on the piano with her pointer finger, singing the scales with her lovely lyric voice.
- Although the tenor blew out his lovely lyric voice years ago, long before his bout with and recovery from leukemia, that doesn't seem to bother his fans.
Synonyms
light, silvery, clear, lilting, flowing, dulcet, euphonious, sweet, sweet-toned, sweet-sounding, honeyed, mellifluous, mellow, lyrical
rare mellifluent
noun (usually lyrics)
1A lyric poem or verse: an edition of Horace’s Lyrics...
- And each string was a different poem, a different lyric organized around a distinct, intense emotion.
- His verse is both metrically and formally experimental, ranging from satire to love lyric, from sonnet to verse epistle, from elegy to hymn.
- Interpreting a poem as a symptom or instance of features of the lyric, for example, might be unsatisfactory hermeneutics but a useful contribution to poetics.
1.1 [mass noun] Lyric poetry as a literary genre: stylistic categories fundamental to literary aesthetics—epic, lyric, drama, comedy, tragedy...
- Levis saw among his generation of poets a ‘new homelessness,’ which meant a lack of identity he saw best attended by a poetry more narrative than lyric.
- Nor is it obvious that unrequitedness resonates in Petrarchan lyric in quite the way it does in the literature of American conquest.
- By structuring the course around questions of genre migration, world literature allows students to think about the novel, epic, and lyric in a diachronic, global framework.
2The words of a popular song: she has published both music and lyrics for a number of songs...
- She shows you lyrics and sheet music, and you quickly see why she loves Sinatra so much.
- In the second verse, the ad leaves out some of the spoken word or background lyrics of the song.
- The colours are bright, the music uptempo and the lyrics consistently engaging here.
Synonyms
words, libretto, book, text, lines
Origin
Late 16th century: from French lyrique or Latin lyricus, from Greek lurikos, from lura 'lyre'.