quacksalver

[kwak-sal-ver]

noun

1. a quack doctor.

2. a charlatan.

quacksalver

/ ˈkwækˌsælvə /

noun

1. an archaic word for quack 2

Word History and Origins

Origin of quacksalver¹

1570–80; < early Dutch (now kwakzalver ); quack ¹, salve ¹, -er ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of quacksalver¹

C16: from Dutch, from quack, apparently: to hawk + salf _salve ¹

Example Sentences

The BBC series Trust Me is the story of a "quacksalver" - a person who "dishonestly claims knowledge of, or skill in, medicine; a pedlar of false cures".

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The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath, or Julius Cæsar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone.

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The answers were given with a solemn self-complacency, not unmixed with that shrewdness which was an essential attribute to the success of the ancient quacksalver.

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Then about this time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a Panjandrum of philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain hospitals and to feed proved charities.

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To Johnson, a flatterer was a "claw-back"; a bad doctor, a "quacksalver."

Read more on Time Magazine Archive