lyrical.

1. Expressing feeling in a poetic, musical or imaginatively heightened manner.

2. Expressing enthusiastic praise or description, often at some length.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• lyrical passage
• lyrical style

On the page

The lyrical passage conveyed the loss through recurring sounds and images.

A lyrical style interrupted the otherwise restrained account at the remembered moment.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated general. Forms: Comparative more lyrical; superlative most lyrical where gradation is meaningful. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: style analysis, interpretation, characterization, rhetorical contrast. Disciplines: literary analysis, prose writing, advanced general English. Commonness: moderately common.