Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to verse that is intended to be sung, especially Greek lyric verse of the seventh to fifth century BC.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to song; intended to be sung: applied especially to the more elaborate form of Greek lyric poetry, as distinguished from iambic and elegiac poetry.
- noun A plant of the genus Melica.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- Of or pertaining to song; lyric; tuneful.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of various
grasses , of the genus Melica, from north temperate regions - adjective Of or pertaining to
Greek lyric verse
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Lyric poetry, properly defined, was a distinct branch of what was classified as "melic" poetry (the term roughly translates as "melody" or "air"), strictly differentiated from poetic genres that were meant to be recited without instrumentation or performed with other instruments such as the flute and the oboe-like aulos.
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The symposium was a clubby bastion of the aristocratic male citizenry, but as Ewen Bowie writes in The Oxford History of the Classical World, "melic poetry was at home everywhere," and there is evidence to suggest that rounds of lyric poetry became a standard form of entertainment at after-dinner soirees all across the Aegean archipelago.
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Here we have the smooth-stalked meadow grass, and here is the hedge wood-melic grass, with its slightly drooping panicle, and spikelets on long slender footstalks.
Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children W. Houghton
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Roots of the purple melic grass (_Molinia cærulea_).
Researches on Cellulose 1895-1900 C. F. Cross
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Younger, in distinction to Diodorus Zonas, is mentioned as a friend of his own by Strabo, and was a historian and melic poet besides being an epigrammatist.
Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology Anonymous 1902
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Hugh de Nonant, the new bishop of Coventry, one Confessor's Day had begun saying the introit, when his Lincoln namesake lifted up his voice and began the long melic intonation.
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England 1886
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Spreaders like Japanese bloodgrass and hakonechloa give better coverage, clumpers like blue fescue and hairy melic can punctuate a design.
The Seattle Times 2011
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