creature
Pluralcreatures
- 1Any living being, including an animal, a monster, or an alien.
Scientists discovered a deep-sea creature unlike anything in their records.
Children's books are full of friendly creatures who talk and sing.
Similarbeing, animal, organism, beast
Note
Ordinary usage stretched it from anything made to anything alive, a step away from the older 'created thing' sense. It works well as a broad net, often in the plural: insects and other creatures, marine creatures, all creatures great and small. Critter and craythur are doublets: the same word, taken down different paths into English.
- 2A mysterious, often monstrous animal or being whose identity is unknown.
Witnesses described the creature as a towering, shadowy figure with glowing eyes.
Local folklore tells of a creature haunting the misty woods at night.
Similarmonster, beast, entity, thing
Note
A word that does its work by leaving the thing unnamed. It usually takes the definite article, as in Mike Jason's The Creature: What Is It? (2020) and Kay Chronister's Desert Creatures (2022). Narrators swap it freely with the beast. Once the thing has a name or a species, the writer is back in the everyday living-being sense.
- 3A contemptuous or pitying term for a person.
What a vile creature he turned out to be, lying to everyone who trusted him.
The landlord was a greedy creature who cared nothing for his tenants.
Note
Only sometimes an insult, and the words around it usually decide. The Economist (2013) calls patent trolls "these creatures" in plain scorn, while "the poor creature" turns it toward pity. Ferna Vale's Natalie (1859) speaks admiringly of "the beautiful young creature." The fixed phrase a creature of habit is neutral. It says someone keeps to routines, with no contempt at all.
- 4A person or entity that is subservient to another or depends on another.
The minister was widely seen as a creature of the prime minister, doing whatever he was told.
She refused to become a creature of the men who funded her campaign.
Similarpuppet, pawn, tool, instrument, minion
Note
Dependence is the point: the made thing owes everything to its maker. The word usually takes of, as in a creature of the prime minister. James McPherson's Battle Cry for Freedom (1988) borrows the old pairing from the theological sense, describing states as "creatures rather than creators of the Union." Said of a person, it accuses them of being someone else's instrument.
Less common meaning
- 5Something that has been created, whether living or not; a creation.
The sermon described humankind as the noblest creature in all creation.
Thoughts, my mindes creatures, often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their libertie.
1633, John Donne, Sapho to PhilænisSimilarcreation
Note
The oldest meaning: whatever has been made, set against its maker. Latin creātūra carried it into English, where the word displaced Old English ġesċeaft. Theology kept it alive through the pairing with Creator, as in Frederick William Faber's The Creator and the Creature (1857). John Donne could call his thoughts "my mindes creatures." The sense is now uncommon outside religious writing, and there it can cover the inanimate as well.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English creature, originally meaning "a created thing", borrowed via Old French creature (also criature) from Latin creātūra, from creō. It is a doublet of craythur and critter, and it displaced the native Old English word ġesċeaft.