Noun

(en noun)

A cohesive whole built up of distinct parts.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=1 citation , passage=The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.}}

The birds had built an amazing structure out of sticks and various discarded items.

The underlying shape of a solid.

He studied the structure of her face.

The overall form or organization of something.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03

, author= , title=Pixels or Perish , volume=100, issue=2, page=106 , magazine= citation , passage=Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure , astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.}}

The structure of a sentence.

The structure of the society was still a mystery.

A set of rules defining behaviour.

For some, the structure of school life was oppressive.

(computing)  Several pieces of data treated as a unit.

This structure contains both date and timezone information.

(fishing, uncountable)  Underwater terrain or objects (such as a dead tree or a submerged car) that tend to attract fish

There's lots of structure to be fished along the west shore of the lake; the impoundment submerged a town there when it was built.

A body, such as a political party, with a cohesive purpose or outlook.

The South African leader went off to consult with the structures .

(logic)  A set along with a collection of finitary functions and relations.

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.