Category:Mountebank

Mount"e*bank, n. Etym: [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.

mountebank Mount"e*bank, v. t.

Defn: To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull. [R.] Shak.

mountebank Mount"e*bank, v. i.

Defn: To play the mountebank.