lyric

Lyric goes back to Greek lyrikos, "of or for the lyre." The noun behind it was lyra, the stringed instrument known across the Greek world by the 5th century BCE. A lyric poem was not first a private confession on paper. It was a song shaped for performance with music.

Greek poets such as Sappho and Pindar made that category famous between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. Their poems were composed for singing, dancing, ritual, praise, and love. The instrument gave the genre its name, and the genre gave the adjective a long future. What began as musical classification became literary history.

Latin borrowed the adjective as lyricus, and learned European writing kept it alive. French used lyrique, and English had lyric by the 16th century, first as an adjective for songlike poetry. By the 17th and 18th centuries it was also a noun. The word no longer required an actual lyre, only the idea of song and concentrated feeling.

Modern English stretched lyric further. It can mean a short poem, the words of a song, or a style that is musical and personal. That widening is old in spirit, because the Greek source already joined words and music. Lyric still carries the sound of strings even when no instrument is present.