Noun

(en noun)

(biology) A discrete and complete living thing, such as animal, plant, fungus or microorganism.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=Plastics are energy-rich substances, which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field.}}

(by extension) Any complex thing with properties normally associated with living things.

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.