The degeneration of this word is curious. As the illustrations show, the term “creature” was specially applied to a horse; then, as “creatur” or “critter,’ to an Indian, a “bar,” a “painter,” or any kind of “varmint”; and in course of time to a contemptible person; a “pisen critter” being particularly low in the scale of contempt. Also used good-humouredly. See Appendix XII.
1782. Stolen, the following Creatures, viz. one a bay Horse, the other a half blooded black Mare.—Maryland Journal, July 30.
1786. Broke into the pasture of the Subscriber, Two Bay Creatures, the one a Horse, the other a Mare.—Id., Jan. 6.
1788. A valuable breeding Mare, and several young Creatures nearly of the same strain.—Id., March 4.
1819. I found he meant his pair of horses, or creatures as he called them.—“An Englishman” in The Western Star: Mass. Spy, May 12.
1827. The creaturs are in open view; and a bloody band of accursed Siouxs they are, by their thieving look, and the random fashion in which they ride!—J. F. Cooper, ‘The Prairie,’ i. 49.
1827. I reckon in futur you’ll hitch your creter to the rack afore Patty Pott’s door, she havin’ larnt edification at boardin’ school.—Mass. Spy, Oct. 24: from the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.
1833. It would be ridic’lous if it should be a bar [said the Kentuckian;] them critters sometimes come in here, and I have nothing but my knife.—Knick. Mag., i. 90.
1835. “Do you consider him [the sea-sarpint] dangerous, or is he peaceable?”—“Well, now, to keep to the truth, I never saw him; but Capting Hodijah Folger said how he considered the critter as a sort o’ so, and a sort o’ not.”—‘Col. Crockett’s Tour,’ p. 88 (Phila.).
1836. My little critter [a mustang], who was both blood and bottom, seemed delighted at being at the head of the heap; and having once got fairly started, I wish I may be shot if I did not find it impossible to stop him.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 149 (Phila.).
1836. The old critter says he is married, and makes his wife work in the printing office.—Phila. Public Ledger, Sept. 24.
1836. The report was followed by a furious growl, (which is sometimes the case in Congress,) and the next moment, when I expected to find the tarnal critter [a cougar] struggling with death, I beheld him shaking his head as if nothing more than a bee had stung him.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 153.
1837. With reference to a female volunteer, the Picayune says: “She is all sorts of a critter at fighting.”—Phila. Public Ledger, March 10.
1838. In a few hours, having gathered up my fixens and mounted my creetur, I was threading a narrow pathway through the forest.—E. Flagg, ‘The Far West,’ i. 190 (N.Y.).
1839. I remember once being wakened by a creetur. The dumb thing was standing right over me, looking into my face.—C. F. Hoffman, ‘Wild Scenes,’ i. 40 (Lond.).
1839. “O, I presume there’s no occasion for hurrying,” said the driver. “Yes, there is though, you pisen critter,” said a passenger, “for I shall have a note protested if I don’t get to Simpsonville before three o’clock.”—Charles F. Briggs, ‘Harry Franco,’ i. 18.
1842. A Queer Critter. One of the clerks in the Baltimore Post Office, on opening a bag of letters, discovered a live garter-snake in the same. The critter bore no postmark or frank.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, July 28.
1847. 1847. Then I tracked the critter out of the field to the woods, and all the marks he left behind, showed me that he was the bar.—T. B. Thorpe, ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas,’ p. 25 (Phila.).
1848. The ‘critter’ [a steer] was found quietly consuming clover in an out-house.—Durivage and Burnham, ‘Stray Subjects,’ p. 77 (Phila.).
1848.
| Ah me! a weary ‘critter’ | |
| Was the sad barkeeper then, | |
| Just thinking was he of his bed, | |
| When entered those two men. | |
Id., p. 70. |
1849. He [the Georgian] strode a ‘right smart chance of a critter,’ that could n’t be beat in ‘them diggins,’ if you ’d believe him.—Knick. Mag., xxxiv. 113 (Aug.).
1851. Salander, the principal hero, is not a ‘handsome critter,’ as the Yankee said, when asked his opinion of the first alligator he ever saw, ‘but there ’s a good deal of openness when he smiles!’—Id., xxxvii. 92 (Jan.).
1853. The rooms below [were occupied] by the animals, or, as a Yankee would call them, the critters.—C. C. Felton, ‘Fam. Letters’ (1865), p. 249. (N.E.D.)
1854. Old Mrs. Peabody was allers a dreadful highfalutin critter with stuck-up notions.—Weekly Oregonian, Dec. 23.
1855. If it is proven before the High Council that you did steal a beef creature, don’t get angry, but rise up and acknowledge that you did steal it.—Brigham Young, Oct. 5: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ iii. 49.
1856. I soon found out that if cousin Zeph hadn’t much gumption, he was the best critter in the world for rite down hard work.—Weekly Oregonian, Aug. 2.
1857. This here critter can run the legs off any dog as ever stuck to a deer’s tail, and she was the greatest, tallest, most ’cutest beast on a scent as was ever know’d in them woods—never was flambergasted but oncet—never!—Knick. Mag., xlix. 68 (Jan.).
1857. Though with that he has no fear of wolves, yet he concludes that a hunting-knife and a stick are no match for a whole pack of the kritters, when made savage by the starvation of winter.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 202.
1862.
| We give the critters back, John, | |
| Cos Abram thought ’t was right; | |
| It warn’t your bullyin’ clack, John, | |
| Provokin’ us to fight. | |
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd S., No. 2. [“The critters” were Messrs. Mason and Slidell.] |
