mountebank
Other forms: mountebanks
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.
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a flamboyant deceiver; one who attracts customers with tricks or jokessynonyms: charlatantypes:craniologist, phrenologistsomeone who claims to be able to read your character from the shape of your skullquackan untrained person who pretends to be a physician and who dispenses medical advice
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Vocabulary lists containing mountebank
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Influenced by the duplicitous Iago, Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army, begins to doubt his wife's faithfulness.
Shakespeare's famous tragedy tells the story of a Danish prince who must decide whether or not to avenge his father's death.