I explain why Thomas Wilson likens to cuttlefish those orators who rely too heavily on inkhorn terms. For the sake of comparison, I also discuss how Renaissance critics use other creaturely metaphors—eels, snakes, devils, and oxen—to impugn bad rhetoricians. My underlying purpose is to reveal Wilson’s neglected religious motives for rejecting inkpot words and, by extension, some of the key religious motives informing the period's language controversies.