Mountebank
Contents
English
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
Verb
Mountebank (third-person singular simple present Mountebanks, present participle Mountebanking, simple past and past participle Mountebanked)
- (intransitive) To act as a mountebank
- 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
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
Pronunciation
Quotations
- * For examples of the usage of this term see the citations page.
