ENTERING LYRICS WITHOUT MUSIC

No.

No there is no way..

No, But you could use rhythm input mode first, attach lyrics to that and then use repitch mode.

Or write the lyrics first in a text/vertical frame then write the melody and write your lyrics again as lyrics.

You can certainly type the lyrics into a text frame, and if are carefully to add your hyphens between syllables and underscores where you expect melismas, you can then copy & paste them into your score once you add the notes. But realistically, it's going to be far harder to guess exactly where all those syllable breaks and melismas will occur. And that's also part of why it's kind of not really realistic to expect to be able to write lyrics then add notes. Consider, when writing the lyrics only, chances you won't even be putting them into the correct measures - how would you know which lyrics go into which measures until you've already worked out the rhythms?

So it's not some arbitrary limitation of MuseScore, it's just not something that makes much sense from a technical perspective.

If you have an idea of how the lyrics would work metrically, you could fill a part with eighth notes or whatever suits you best, set the notes to NOT play, and add the lyrics to that line. I think you could even hide the eighth notes if you like. (No guarantees on any of this because I'm not running the program to test right now.) Once you have the lyrics in place, you could add your melody in another voice or instrument, and Bob's yer uncle! (well, you'd have to do a fair amount of adjustment, but it might give you an idea of how things should work.)