Poetic means having the beauty or form of poetry. A poetic description, poetic language, poetic in its way.
Of prose it means beautifully expressed; of a form it means belonging to poetry. Poetic licence is the freedom to bend fact or grammar for effect, and claiming it is usually an admission. Poetic justice is an outcome that fits the offence so neatly it seems arranged. Note poetry, poet; and that poetic and poetical are both correct, with poetical now confined almost entirely to titles of old books.
1adjectivepoeticHaving the beauty or form of poetry.
“His letters to her were so poetic that she kept them all her life.”
poetic is a quality of poetry.
Greek poietikos comes from poiein, to make. Everything poetic is named after making rather than feeling, which is a corrective the word itself quietly offers.
Ancient Greek
ποιητικός
Latin
poeticus
Middle French
poetique
English, today
poetic
Built from
From Middle French poetique, from Latin poeticus, from Ancient Greek ποιητικός from ποιέω (“make”). Displaced native sċoplīċ and lēoþlīċ. a doublet of poietic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA