mountebank

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a charlatan who deceives people with flamboyant claims or performances

   The supposed healer was exposed as a mountebank selling worthless cures.

2. 2
   noun

   a boastful or pretentious person who falsely claims expertise or importance

   Critics dismissed the self-appointed strategist as a political mountebank.

From obsolete Italian montambanco, a seller of quack medicines who mounted a bench to address a crowd, from monta in banco, 'mount on the bench.' English broadened the word from an itinerant medicine seller to any showy fraud or pretender.

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