Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Mountebank
Mount′e-bank
,Noun.
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 infallible 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.
Mount′e-bank
,Verb.
T.
To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull.
[R.]
Shak.
Mount′e-bank
,Verb.
I.
To play the mountebank.
Webster 1828 Edition
Mountebank
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
,Verb.
T.
Definition 2024
mountebank
mountebank
English
Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757
Noun
mountebank (plural mountebanks)
- One who sells dubious medicines.
- There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm. - John Bull
- One who sells by deception; a con artist; a charlatan.
- 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——”
- 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part III: “The Mayors”, chapter 7, page 106, ¶ 13
Quotations
- * For usage examples of this term, see Citations:mountebank.
See also
Verb
mountebank (third-person singular simple present mountebanks, present participle mountebanking, simple past and past participle mountebanked)
- (intransitive) To act as a mountebank.
- (transitive) To cheat by boasting and false pretenses.
- Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved - Coriolanus, Wm. Shakespeare
- Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
Derived terms
References
- ↑ Funk, W. J., Word origins and their romantic stories, New York, Wilfred Funk, Inc.