Noun

(en noun)

A created thing, whether animate or inanimate; a creation.

* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":

Thoughts, my mindes creatures , often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their libertie.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.10:

the natural truth of God is an artificial erection of Man, and the Creator himself but a subtile invention of the Creature .

* {{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=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.}}

A living being; an animal or human.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.}}

A being subservient to or dependent upon another.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 240:

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 admission to the Union.

Noun

(en noun)

(informal) A man, a fellow; an ordinary man, a man on the street.

* 1930 , , 2006, Overlook Press, page 235,

The door flew open, and there was a bloke' with spectacles on his face and all round the spectacles an expression of strained anguish. A ' bloke with a secret sorrow.

* 1931 , , lyrics of 1930, 31 and 33 versions,

She messed around with a bloke named Smoky.

* 1958 , , page 281,

It was a Cockney bloke' who had never seen a cow till he came inside. Cragg said it took some ' blokes like that, and city fellows are the worse.

* 2000 , Elizabeth Young, Asking for Trouble , page 19,

As her current bloke was turning out better than expected, I didn't see much of her lately.

(UK) a man who behaves in a particularly laddish or overtly heterosexual manner.

An anglophone man.

(Australia) An exemplar of a certain masculine, independent male archetype.

* 2000 May 5, Belinda Luscombe, “ Cinema: Of Mad Max and Madder Maximus”, Time :

‘The Bloke'’ is a certain kind of Australian or New Zealand male. ¶ Most of all, the ' Bloke does not whinge.