mountebank, charlatan
(noun) a flamboyant deceiver; one who attracts customers with tricks or jokes
Source: WordNet® 3.1
mountebank (plural mountebanks)
One who sells dubious medicines.
One who sells by deception; a con artist; a charlatan.
(obsolete) An acrobat.
mountebank (third-person singular simple present mountebanks, present participle mountebanking, simple past and past participle mountebanked)
(intransitive) To act as a mountebank.
(transitive) To cheat by boasting and false pretenses.
Source: Wiktionary
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.
Mount"e*bank, v. t.
Definition: To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull. [R.] Shak.
Mount"e*bank, v. i.
Definition: To play the mountebank.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
24 February 2025
(noun) (astronomy) position of a planet as defined by its angular distance from its perihelion (as observed from the sun)
The Boston Tea Party helped popularize coffee in America. The hefty tea tax imposed on the colonies in 1773 resulted in America switching from tea to coffee. In the lead up to the Revolutionary War, it became patriotic to sip java instead of tea. The Civil War made the drink more pervasive. Coffee helped energize tired troops, and drinking it became an expression of freedom.
