mountebank
/ˈmaʊntəˌbæŋk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.68 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One who sells by deception; a con artist.
Example Sentences
- "She is abus'd, ſtolne from me, and corrupted / By Spels, and Medicines, bought of Mountebanks"
- "There is nothing ſo impoſſible in Nature, but Mountebanks vvill undertake; nothing ſo incredible but they vvill affirm: Mrs. Bull’s Condition vvas look’d upon as deſperate by all the Men of Art; then Signior Cavallo judged it vvas high time for him to interpoſe, he bragg’d that he had an infallible Ointment and Plaiſter, vvhich being applied to the Sore vvould Cure it in a fevv Days; […]"
- "A personage appears before him with a broad-brimmed hat, such as the students wear at Wittenberg, a wandering clerk, perhaps, or a charlatan Juggler, a mountebank at a fair, who has laid out on a stand a laboratory of ill-assorted jars."
- "Donne was a mountebank who wrapped up his lack of meaning in hard words."
- "Are you allowing yourselves to be fooled by this mountebank, this harlequin? Do you cringe before a religion compounded of clouds and moonbeams? This man is an imposter and the Galactic Spirit he speaks of a fraud of the imagination devised to——"
- "It has been pointed out in this space before that a number of the titles you'll find shelved under self-help in your local bookshop are, on closer examination, farragos of wooden-headed tripe, written by mountebanks and halfwits."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: montambanco