mountebank

American  

[moun-tuh-bangk] / ˈmaʊn təˌbæŋk /

noun

1. a person who sells quack medicines, as from a platform in public places, attracting and influencing an audience by tricks, storytelling, etc.

   Synonyms:

   pitchman

2. any charlatan or quack.

   Synonyms:

   fraud, pretender, phony

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verb (used without object)

1. to act or operate as a mountebank.

mountebank British  

/ ˈmaʊntɪˌbæŋk /

noun

1. (formerly) a person who sold quack medicines in public places

2. a charlatan; fake

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verb

1. (intr) to play the mountebank

Other Word Forms

• mountebankery noun

Etymology

Origin of mountebank

1570–80; (< Middle French ) < Italian montimbanco one who climbs on a bench, equivalent to mont ( are ) to climb ( see mount ¹) + -im-, variant of in on + banco bench ( see bank ²)

Explanation

A mountebank has a talent for tricking people into buying things, like the mountebank who charms women into buying "magic beauty pills" for hundreds of dollars, though they are just ordinary vitamins you can buy anywhere. Mountebank, pronounced "MOUN-tih-bank," has an interesting origin, in the Italian phrase "monta in banco." It describes a "doctor" who would "mount a bench" in the marketplace. Standing a bit higher than the crowd enabled people to hear his sales pitch and see the potions and powders he claimed were medical cures that never failed — claims as bogus as his credentials. A mountebank is a fast-talking crook pretending to be an expert.

Example Sentences

Mencken described Bryan as “a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity.”

From Salon • Jan. 25, 2024

Forget the Tinder swindler — how about the MI5 mountebank?

From New York Times • Aug. 11, 2022

“I’ll ask him—say, for something I’m writing—‘A guy’s wandering through upstate New York in 1802 and he comes to a tavern and there’s some sort of mountebank.

From Slate • Dec. 10, 2018

“Some dreadful mountebank in a long-tailed coat will open . . . with a windy speech; then another mountebank will repeat the same rubbish in other words.”

From The New Yorker • Jun. 27, 2016

Was it not a dangerous word, too closely connected to Hobbes and to dubious stories about sympathetic magic told by Digby—someone whom John Evelyn, another early member, could dismiss as an arrant mountebank?

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton