mountebank

From 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.
   • John Bull

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

2. 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——”

3. (obsolete) An acrobat.

* For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:mountebank.

• patent medicine
• snake oil
• quack

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.

   Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
   Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved - Coriolanus, Wm. Shakespeare

• mountebankery