creature/critter

[Monte Davis]

> as I understand it, 'critter' is a colloquial 
> word, maybe it's 
> also used regionally in the States.

American Heritage: "Critter, a pronunciation spelling of creature, actually
reflects a pronunciation 
that would have been very familiar to Shakespeare: 16th- and 17th-century
English had not yet 
begun to pronounce the -ture suffix with its modern (ch) sound. This archaic
pronunciation still exists in American critter..." 

So at one time many literate speakers *said* "critter," but to *spell* it
that way signaled semi-literacy: i.e. that you were more influenced by ear
than by reading. So as mass literacy and standardized spelling took hold, it
retreated to the status of dialect-on-the-page -- certainly there well
before AtD's start date of 1893. Very common in the representation of
cowboy/miner speech in the Western dime novels of the time.