William Shakespeare
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Mountebank derives from the Italian montimbanco, which was formed by combining the verb "montare" ("to mount"), the preposition "in" (converted to im, meaning "in" or "on"), and the noun "banco" ("bench"). Put these components together and you can deduce the literal origins of "mountebank" as someone mounted on a bench - the "bench" being the platform on which charlatans from the 16th and 17th centuries would stand to sell their phony medicines. Mountebanks often included various forms of light entertainment on stage in order to attract customers. Later, extended uses of "mountebank" referred to someone who falsely claims to have knowledge about a particular subject or a person who simply pretends to be something he or she is not in order to gain attention.
Examples of mountebank in a Sentence
Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 13 June 2025
With tariffs on pharmaceuticals, the mountebank of Mar-A-Lago wants to punish a small democracy of 5.3 million people that for the past 60 years has worked its way into the top table of drug research and production: Ireland.
—Kevin Rennie, Hartford Courant, 29 Mar. 2025
Gould observed that Jerry Falwell had taken up the mountebank’s mission of William Jennings Bryan.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 26 July 2024
Now, this pallid Color Purple epitomizes the artistic dearth of an era when a cultural mountebank like Winfrey uses race and feminist guile to cheat us of America’s most creative achievements.
—Armond White, National Review, 3 Jan. 2024
The Republican, who is angling for the GOP nomination for president, staged a roundtable of scientific mountebanks on Wednesday to attack the vaccines.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 15 Sep. 2023
The alternative circumstance, that crackpots and mountebanks might claim such evidence exists, then fail to produce any, is, on the other hand, entirely plausible and familiar.
—Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 31 July 2023
Berk was no mountebank or philistine.
—Mimi Kramer, Vulture, 10 May 2022
Another was Charles Colchester, a mountebank who also conjured Willie to the satisfaction of the first lady.
—John J. Miller, WSJ, 30 Oct. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Mountebank.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mountebank. Accessed 5 Jul. 2025.
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mountebank
noun
Shak.
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