Mount"e*bank (?), n. [It. montimbanco, montambanco; montare to mount + in in, upon + banco bench. See Mount, and 4th Bank.]
1.
One who mounts a bench or stage in the market or other public place, boasts of his skill in curing diseases, and vends medicines which he pretends are infalliable remedies; a quack doctor.
Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank ... is preferred before an able physician.
Whitlock.
2.
Any boastful or false pretender; a charlatan; a quack.
Nothing so impossible in nature but mountebanks will undertake.
Arbuthnot.
© Webster 1913.
Mount"e*bank, v. t.
To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull.
[R.]
Shak.
© Webster 1913.
Mount"e*bank, v. i.
To play the mountebank.
© Webster 1913.