mountebank

From archaic Italian montambanco (“quack who mounts a bench to hawk his wares”), contracted from monta-in-banco (“mount on bench”).[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈmaʊntəˌbæŋk/

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mountebank (plural mountebanks)

1. One who sells dubious medicines.
   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 313:

     She is abus'd, ſtolne from me, and corrupted / By Spels, and Medicines, bought of Mountebanks

   • 1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “How Signior Cavallo, an Italian Quack, Undertook to Cure Mrs. Bull of Her Ulcer”, in Law is a Bottomless-Pit. […], London: […] John Morphew, […], →OCLC, page 16:

     There is nothing ſo impoſſible in Nature, but Mountebanks vvill undertake; nothing ſo incredible but they vvill affirm: Mrs. Bull’s Condition vvas look’d upon as deſperate by all the Men of Art; then Signior Cavallo judged it vvas high time for him to interpoſe, he bragg’d that he had an infallible Ointment and Plaiſter, vvhich being applied to the Sore vvould Cure it in a fevv Days; […]

   • 1976 [1969], chapter 6, in William Weaver, transl., The Castle of Crossed Destinies, translation of Il castello dei destini incrociati by Italo Calvino, part 2, page 92:

     A personage appears before him with a broad-brimmed hat, such as the students wear at Wittenberg, a wandering clerk, perhaps, or a charlatan Juggler, a mountebank at a fair, who has laid out on a stand a laboratory of ill-assorted jars.

2. One who sells by deception; a con artist.

   Synonyms: charlatan, conman, fake, quack; see also Thesaurus:confidence trickster

   • 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 2, in Orlando: A Biography, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 83:

     Donne was a mountebank who wrapped up his lack of meaning in hard words.

   • 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part III: “The Mayors”, chapter 7, page 106, ¶ 13

     “Are you allowing yourselves to be fooled by this mountebank, this harlequin? Do you cringe before a religion compounded of clouds and moonbeams? This man is an imposter and the Galactic Spirit he speaks of a fraud of the imagination devised to——”

   • 2015 March 31, Margalit Fox, “Gary Dahl, Inventor of the Pet Rock, Dies at 78”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Gary Dahl, the man behind that scheme—described variously as a marketing genius and a genial mountebank—died on March 23 at 78.

3. Any boastful, false pretender.
   • c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 87, lines 97-102:

     They ſay this towne is full of coſenage: / As nimble Iuglers that deceiue the eie: / Darke working Sorcerers that change the minde: / Soule-killing Witches that deforme the bodie: / Diſguiſed Cheaters, prating Mountebankes, / And manie ſuch like liberties of ſinne:

   • 1662, [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, →OCLC:

     As if Divinity had catch'd / The Itch, of purpose to be scratch'd; / Or, like a Mountebank, did wound / And stab her self with doubts profound, / Only to shew with how small pain / The sores of faith are cur'd again […]

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter VII, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     “We’re not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won’t marry into Greenwich Fair, ma’am.” “We’re not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won’t marry into Greenwich Fair, ma’am.”

4. (obsolete) An acrobat.

• mountebankery

• saltimbanco

• patent medicine
• snake oil

mountebank (third-person singular simple present mountebanks, present participle mountebanking, simple past and past participle mountebanked)

1. (intransitive) To act as a mountebank.
2. (transitive) To cheat by boasting and false pretenses.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 18, column 2:

     Ile Mountebanke their Loues, / Cogge their Hearts from them,