WORD OF THE DAY

A lyricist is an artist who writes the words to songs. While Leonard Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story, Stephen Sondheim was the lyricist.

A song's words are lyrics, and the person who writes them is a lyricist. Originally, these terms described a kind of musical poetry and the poet who specialized in the form: the Greek root lyrikos means "singing to the lyre." Today, lyricists write the words that a vocalist will sing. Sometimes they write the music too, though lyricists often collaborate with composers to create a song.