• IPA: /ˈmaʊntəˌbæŋk/

mountebank (plural mountebanks)

1. One who sells dubious medicines.

   • There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm.

2. One who sells by deception; a con artist; a charlatan.
   • 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part III: “The Mayors”, chapter 7, page 106, ¶ 13

     “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——”

3. (obsolete) An acrobat.

mountebank (mountebanks, present participle mountebanking; past and past participle mountebanked)

1. (intransitive) To act as a mountebank.
2. (transitive) To cheat by boasting and false pretenses.
   • c. 1608–1609, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene ii]:

     I'll mountebank their loves,
     Cog their hearts from them.