creature

Noun

1. A living being, such as an animal, monster, or alien.
   • insects and other creatures
   • But what would be the sentiment of uppertendom, when it should be rumored that the beautiful young creature, of the proud Clarence Delwood's choice, had stooped so low, as to maintain herself by her own hands? - 1859,...
   • Urologists often want live sea horses for study of kidney disorders, for the sea horse is one of the few marine creatures with functioning kidneys. - 1960, William Bittle Gray, Creatures of the Sea, New York : W. Funk:
2. An unidentified, mysterious, and often monstrous animal or being.
   • When it comes to this creature you have to unlearn everything you've ever learned about physiology. For example, when its appendages emerge to feed, they do so using incredible bursts of growth, quite unlike anything...
   • Tammy and Cherise heard the creature's roar. “I think they got him,” Tammy said. “See, I told you. Everything's going to be alright.” Cherise smiled. The beast swung its other, human-like arm, knocking the entire...
   • The group stood motionless as an entire stream of creatures emerged from the canyons and then passed through, one after another. All were formed from the same undead materials, limbs and trunks and heads conveying...
3. A human.
   • He's a creature of habit.
   • Otherwise, Partridge discovered himself to be an amiable creature, with a disconcerting habit of occasionally muddling himself up with ethical questions of extreme profundity, sandwiched in between technicalities of...
   • She was like a Beardsley Salome, he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry. - 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1,...
4. A created thing, whether animate or inanimate; a creation.
   • Thoughts, my mindes creatures, often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their libertie. - 1633, John Donne, Sapho to Philænis:
   • the natural truth of God is an artificial erection of Man, and the Creator himself but a subtile invention of the Creature. - 1646, Thomas Browne, chapter I, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], London: […] T[homas] H[arper]...
   • Must not then all understanding Creatures center in their Creator, as in the highest and best of Beings? And must not this Creator then be eſſentially God? What Infatuation then is it, that leads Men to think of a...
5. A being subservient to or dependent upon another.
   • "You know what I advise," said Mrs. Smith. "Ask Miss Dunstable to advance the money on the same security which the duke holds. She will be as safe then as he is now. And if you can arrange that, stand for the county...
   • they, too, despite the appearance of being creatures rather than creators of the Union, could assert the prior sovereignty of their states, for each had formed a state constitution […] before petitioning Congress for...

   Synonyms: puppet