Meaning

noun the text of a popular song or musical-comedy number

noun a short poem of songlike quality

verb write lyrics for (a song)

originFrom 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…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0