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The word creep comes from the French word crepe – a food, pancake-like in appearance, though inferior in taste. The English, in their first encounters with this thin, French pancake, shared a common distaste for this breakfast food that they felt had been poorly prepared. “These pancakes are weird,” was a common reaction. An equally occurring comment was: “These are not as good as the regular ones.” Naturally, then, when the English, in their travels, encountered something that was “weird” or “not as good as the regular ones,” they likened it to the crepe. Of course lacking the flare of the French accent, the English pronounced the word according to the rules of English grammar – “creep.”

John P. Fitzwater was the first to use the term “creep” in referring to a person or thing that was not an unusually thin pancake. We know this as a fact because if ever a person later called somebody or something a creep, Fitzwater would pipe up from across the room, “Hey, I invented that!”

An exceptionally distinguished and cultured gentleman, Fitzwater prided himself on his knowledge of foreign cuisine. He first used the term after picking at a plate of “creeps with strawberries and whipped topping” at the fine French restaurant Pierre Oui Bonjour. The term was used to point out a rather Bizarre Frenchman to Fitzwater’s dining friend, Edmund Pennington. He used the term again one block later to describe another Frenchman. And again, a half block after that. Soon, every person the two pompous Englishmen met was a “thin, tasteless pancake.” This inside joke kept the two amused for many weeks as they could not find a Frenchman that was “as good as the regular ones” – regular ones being English ones.