creaturess

English

Etymology

From creature +‎ -ess.

Noun

creaturess (plural creaturesses)

1. (rare, archaic) female equivalent of creature
   • 1845 February 15, Dow Jr. [pseudonym; Elbridge Gerry Paige], “Dow Jr. on Tight Lacing”, in Clarksville Jeffersonian‎^[1], volume 1, number 39, Clarksville, Tenn.:

     By squeezing your waist into an unnaturally small circumference, you compress your lives into the small compass of a few short years—you don’t give the bellowses^[sic] in your bosoms a chance to blow and keep bright the flames of existence—the warm glow of health soon leaves your cheek, or flashes by fits and starts, like the half choked gas-burner—your eyes in a short time cease to sparkle with joy and love—your roses of beauty quickly fade and fall—you look as dull and worn out as sunlight strained through the windows of a Catholic cathedral. Now, my interesting young creaturesses, what do you gain by all your self-squeezing?

   • 1860, Elizabeth C[lendenon] Wright, “The Nature Cure.—For the Body.”, in Lichen Tufts, from the Alleghanies, New York, N.Y.: M[ichael] Doolady, page 68:

     These two absurd notions, that it is not pretty to be robust and rose, and that it is pretty to try to superinduce beauty or genius by making owls of ourselves in turning night into day, or by rat-like inhabiting unventilated and unwholesome quarters, seem, in stating, too ridiculous and foolish to require a rebuff or refutation; and yet there are multitudes of our fellow-creatures and creaturesses acting upon them daily.

   • 1918 September 21, S G. Ruegg, “Life in a Western Military Cantonment: Rev. S G. Ruegg Sends His Greetings to Home Folks and Tells of the Daily Experiences Encountered “Out There””, in The Menasha Record, Menasha, Wis., Neenah, Wis., page three:

     The men treat women with great diference^[sic] here and when they can’t talk with the pretty girls that come they just kinder drop their eyes and finish it off with a sigh. Once in a while some of the creaturesses come into our “Y” and then just forget themselves and when we learn that at home they are just as lonesome for these men then our Puritan censorious eyes peeping from behind the counter turn from regidity^[sic] to a twinkle and we say like the old soldier said: “Never too late to yearn.”