Adjacent Words

Mountebank definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

MOUNT'EBANK, n.
1. One who mounts a bench or state in the market or other public place, boasts of his skill in curing diseases, vends medicines which he pretends are infallible remedies, and thus deludes the ignorant multitude. Persons of this character may be indicted and punished.
2. Any boastful and false pretender.
Nothing so impossible in nature, but mountebanks will undertake.
MOUNT'EBANK, v.t. To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a flamboyant deceiver; one who attracts customers with tricks or jokes [syn: mountebank, charlatan]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Italian montimbanco, from montare to mount + in in, on + banco, banca bench Date: 1577 1. a person who sells quack medicines from a platform 2. a boastful unscrupulous pretender ; charlatan • mountebankery noun II. verb Date: 1607 transitive verb obsolete to beguile or transform by trickery <I'll mountebank their loves — Shakespeare> intransitive verb to play the mountebank

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a swindler; a charlatan. 2 a clown. 3 hist. an itinerant quack appealing to an audience from a platform. Derivatives: mountebankery n. Etymology: It. montambanco = monta in banco climb on bench: see MOUNT(1), BENCH

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Mountebank Mount"e*bank, n. [It. montimbanco, montambanco; montare to mount + in in, upon + banco bench. See Mount, and 4th Bank.] 1. One who mounts a bench or stage in the market or other public place, boasts of his skill in curing diseases, and vends medicines which he pretends are infalliable remedies; a quack doctor. Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank . . . is preferred before an able physician. --Whitlock. 2. Any boastful or false pretender; a charlatan; a quack. Nothing so impossible in nature but mountebanks will undertake. --Arbuthnot.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Mountebank Mount"e*bank, v. t. To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull. [R.] --Shak.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Mountebank Mount"e*bank, v. i. To play the mountebank.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Pretender, charlatan, empiric, quack, quack doctor.

Moby Thesaurus

artist, artiste, belly dancer, blagueur, bluff, bluffer, burlesque queen, charlatan, cheat, chorine, chorus boy, chorus girl, con man, confidence man, conjurer, coryphee, dancer, dancing girl, defrauder, ecdysiast, entertainer, exotic dancer, fake, faker, female impersonator, flimflammer, fourflusher, fraud, geisha, geisha girl, guisard, guiser, gyp, hoofer, humbug, impersonator, impostor, magician, malingerer, mummer, musician, nautch girl, peeler, performer, phony, poser, poseur, prestidigitator, pretender, public entertainer, quack, quacksalver, quackster, ringer, saltimbanco, sham, shammer, sharper, show girl, singer, stripper, stripteaser, stripteuse, vaudevillian, vaudevillist