charlatan, n. and a.
(ˈʃɑːlətən, -tæn)
Forms: 7 chiarlatan, charlitan, (schareleton), 7– charlatan.
[a. F. charlatan ‘a mountebanke, a cousening drug-seller, a pratling quack-salver, a tatler, babler’ (Cotgr.), ad. It. ciarlatano = ciarlatore babbler, patterer, mountebank, f. ciarlare to babble, patter, act the mountebank, f. ciarla, chat, prattle; cf. Sp., Pg. charlar, Wallachian charrar, ONF. charer (Diez) to prattle, babble. Cf. quack to gabble like a duck, talk like a Cheap Jack, puff patent medicines, act as a charlatan.]
A. n.
† 1. A mountebank or Cheap Jack who descants volubly to a crowd in the street; esp. an itinerant vendor of medicines who thus puffs his ‘science’ and drugs. (Now included under 2.)
| [1605 B. Jonson Volpone ii. ii, The Rabble of these ground Ciarlitani, that spred their Clokes on the Pavement. 1611 Coryat Crudities Panegyr. Verses, Sometimes to hear the Ciarlatans.] 1618 D. Belchier Hans Beer-pot D j b, I think the Serieant is grown Mountebancke To cling by shifts, hey, passe, passe, Italian grown; a sharking Charlatan. 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. i. iii. 11 Saltimbancoes, Quacksalvers, and Charlatans, deceive them in lower degrees. 1678 Butler Hud. iii. ii. 971 For Chiarlatans can do no good, Vntil th' are mounted in a Crowd. 1771 Mrs. Harris in Priv. Lett. 1st Ld. Malmesbury I. 214 At the masquerade..Mr. Banbury was a most excellent friseur, Lord Berkeley a charlatan. [1864 Burton Scot Abr. I. iii. 145 He is called a charlatan, quack, and mountebank.] |
† b. One who puffs his wares; a puffer.
| 1670 Cotton Espernon Pref., Though in the foregoing Paragraph, I have discover'd something of the Charlatan in the behalf of my Bookseller. |
2. An empiric who pretends to possess wonderful secrets, esp. in the healing art; an empiric or impostor in medicine, a quack.
| a 1680 Butler Rem. (1759) II. 197 Charlatans make Diseases fit their Medicines, and not their Medicines Diseases. 1710 Addison Tatler No. 240 ¶3 Ordinary Quacks and Charlatans. [1762 J. Brown Poetry & Mus. iii. 34 note, Charlatans, a Word with which we have none precisely correspondent in our Language: It signifies here, one who is a Pretender to Medecine by the Arts of Magic.] 1791 Burke Let. Memb. Nat. Assembly Wks. 1842 I. 478 The nation is sick, very sick, by their medicines. But the charlatan tells them that what is passed cannot be helped. 1841 Brewster Mart. Sc. ii. iv. (1856) 153 The charlatans, whether they deal in moral or in physical wonders, form a race which is never extinct. 1860 Tanner Pregnancy i. 3. |
3. An assuming empty pretender to knowledge or skill; a pretentious impostor.
| 1809 Edin. Rev. Apr. 193 The Alexandrian sages [Proclus, etc.]..were in fact the charlatans of antient philosophy. 1840 Carlyle Heroes (1858) 268 A questionable step for me..to say..that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan. 1858 Froude Hist. Eng. III. xvi. 363 His [Cromwell's] true creed was a hatred of charlatans. 1872 Geo. Eliot Middlem. v. xlv. 335 A charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans. |
B. adj. Of or pertaining to a charlatan; empirical, quack.
| 1671 True Non-Conf. 376 But the schareleton tricks of a pitiful impostor. 1852 Gladstone Glean. IV. ii. 141 Theatrical, not to say charlatan and mountebank, politics. 1862 Shirley Nugæ Crit. xi. 472 Because I love freedom..I hesitate to apply the charlatan quackeries which may fatally hurt all that is best and most living in English liberty. |