Forms: 3–4 -ur, 3–6 -ure, 3–7 -our, 4–5 -oure, 4– -or. [ME. and AF. creatour, -ur = OF. creator, -ur, -our, later -eur, of learned or liturgical formation, ad. L. creātōr-em. The pop. OF. word was creere, criere.]
1. The Supreme Being who creates all things. (In OE. scieppend.)
c. 1290. S. Eng. Leg., I. 111/174. For-to serui is creatour.
a. 1300. Cursor M., 1119 (Cott.). Þar-wit com our creature [v.r. creatour] For to spek wit þat traiture.
c. 1386. Chaucer, 2nd Nun’s T., 49. The creatour of euery creature.
c. 1489. Caxton, Blanchardyn, xxxv. 133. God, my swete creatour.
a. 1533. Ld. Berners, Huon, cxxii. 436. Prayse be to our lorde god my creature.
1611. Bible, Isa. xl. 28. The Creatour of the ends of the earth.
1667. Milton, P. L., X. 486. Him by fraud I have seduc’d From his Creator.
1862. Ruskin, Munera P. (1820), 4. Human nature, as its Creator made it.
2. gen. One who, or that which, creates or gives origin to.
1579. Fulke, Heskin’s Parl., 154. We haue learned of their owne writers … that a Priest is … the creator of his creator.
1598. B. Jonson, Ev. Man in Hum., II. ii. Translated thus from a poor creature to a creator; for now must I create an intolerable sort of lies.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., I. v. Since it thus appears that custom was the creator of prelaty.
1641. R. Brooke, Eng. Episc., I. vii. 35. Winchester was not the first that … professed such universal Obedience to his Creator the Pope.
1818. Cruise, Digest (ed. 2), III. 456. If the creator of the use had a fee simple in the land.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (1879), II. xiv. 350. Just as little as the Voltaic battery is the animal body a creator of force.
Hence Creatoress = CREATRESS.
1827. Westm. Rev., VII. 331, note. Luonto-Luonot, Nature, the Creatoress, Kawe’s wife.
