lyrics

The English word lyrics is tied to Greek lyra, the lyre. Greek lyrikos meant "of the lyre," and lyric poetry was poetry meant to be sung. In Latin, lyricus carried that sense into literary description. By the Middle Ages, lyric referred to songlike verse in European languages.

English lyric appears in the 1580s for a songlike poem. The plural form lyrics is recorded in the 18th century for the words of a song. That plural was treated as a collective singular, so "the lyrics is" became normal. The shift is a common English pattern seen in nouns like "news."

The word's path is musical first and textual second. Song words were once inseparable from performance, and lyric stayed close to voice. Printing and popular music made the words visible as text apart from music. That separation cemented lyrics as the term for the words alone.

By the 20th century, lyrics was the standard label for a song's words. It carried over into genres from opera to hip‑hop. The term keeps the link to the lyre even when no lyre is present. The old instrument still names the modern text.