mountebank

mountebank

English

WOTD – 11 October 2006

Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmaʊntəˌbæŋk/

• Audio (US)

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Noun

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 606515358, [Act I, scene iii], page 313:

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

   • 1712, John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull:

     There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm.

   • 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 1264731410, 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 0362-4331:

     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, 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 606515358, [Act I, scene ii], lines 97-102, page 87:

     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 963614346:

     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 7, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, OCLC 2057953:

     “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.

Derived terms

• mountebankery

Related terms

• saltimbanco

Translations

charlatan

Arabic: دَجّال‎ m (dajjāl), مُشَعْوِذ‎ m (mušaʿwiḏ) Bulgarian: шарлатанин (bg) m (šarlatanin) Greek: Ancient: ὀχλαγωγός m (okhlagōgós) Ukrainian: шарлатан (uk) m (šarlatan)

See also

• patent medicine
• snake oil

Verb

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 606515358, [Act III, scene ii], page 18, column 2:

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

References

1. Funk, W. J., Word origins and their romantic stories, New York, Wilfred Funk, Inc.