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charlatan

  (shär'lə-tən) pronunciation
n.

A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.

[French, from Italian ciarlatano, probably alteration (influenced by ciarlare, to prattle) of cerretano, inhabitant of Cerreto, a city of Italy once famous for its quacks.]

charlatanic char'la·tan'ic (-tăn'ĭk) or char'la·tan'i·cal adj.
charlatanism char'la·tan·ism or char'la·tan·ry n.
 
 
Thesaurus: charlatan

noun

    One who fakes: fake, faker, fraud, humbug, impostor, mountebank, phony, pretender, quack. See true/false.

 
Dental Dictionary: charlatan

n

A quack, a person who pretends to have skills or knowledge that he or she does not possess.

 

A pretender to knowledge or skills not possessed; in veterinary medicine, a quack.


 
Word Tutor: charlatan
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A person who pretends to have a certain knowledge or ability.

pronunciation The charlatan was able to trick all but the most wise people of the town.

 
Wikipedia: charlatan
Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757
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Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757

A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money or advantage by pretense.

The word comes from French charlatan, a seller of medicines who might advertise his presence with music and an outdoor stage show. The most well known of the Parisian charlatans was Tabarin who set up a stage in the Place Dauphin, Paris in 1618, and whose commedia dell'arte inspired skits and whose farces inspired Molière. Ultimately, etymologists trace "charlatan" from either the Italian ciarlare, to prattle; or from Cerretano, a resident of Cerreto, a town that was apparently notorious for producing quacks.

In usage, a subtle difference is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence people. The charlatan is usually a salesperson. He does not try to create a personal relationship with his marks, or set up an elaborate hoax using roleplaying. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of resorting to quackery, pseudoscience, or some knowingly employed bogus means of impressing people in order to swindle his victims by selling them worthless nostrums and similar goods or services that will not deliver on the promises made for them. The word calls forth the image of an old-time medicine show operator, who has long left town by the time the people who bought his snake oil tonic realize that it does not perform as advertised.

In reported spiritual communications, a charlatan is a person who fakes evidence that a spirit is "making contact" with the medium and seekers. This has been challenged successfully by skeptics who wrote passwords and gave them to people of trust, containing a password that should be spoken by the person if he ever tried to make contact, to validate the truth of the claim. No such claim has been verified. For example, Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato[1] and magician Houdini.

Synonyms for "charlatan" include "mountebank" and "quack". "Mountebank" comes from the Italian montambanco or montimbanco based on the phrase monta in banco - literally referring to the action of a seller of dubious medicines getting up on a bench to address his audience of potential customers.[2]

"Quack" is a reference to "quackery" or the practice of dubious medicine.

Famous charlatans

Famous American charlatans include John R. Brinkley, the "goat-gland doctor" who implanted goat glands as a means of curing male impotence, helped pioneer both American and Mexican radio broadcasting, and twice ran unsuccessfully for governor of Kansas. Another famous charlatan was Albert Abrams, the advocate of radionics and other similar electrical quackery who was active in the early twentieth century.[3]

Another famous charlatan is the Italian Alessandro Cagliostro (real name Giuseppe Balsamo) who claimed to be a Count.

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Dictionary Reference
  3. ^ Skeptics Dictionary

 
Translations: Translations for: Charlatan

Dansk (Danish)
n. - charlatan, svindler

Nederlands (Dutch)
kwakzalver

Français (French)
n. - charlatan

Deutsch (German)
n. - Quacksalber, Kurpfuscher, Scharlatan

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κομπογιαννίτης, τσαρλατάνος

Italiano (Italian)
ciarlatano

Português (Portuguese)
n. - charlatão (m)

Русский (Russian)
шарлатан

Español (Spanish)
n. - charlatán, curandero

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - charlatan

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
吹牛者

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 吹牛者

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 크게 허풍을 떠는 사람, 협잡꾼, 돌팔이 의사

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 大ぼら吹き, 山師, やぶ医者

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) دجال, نصاب, محتال‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮נוכל, שרלטן‬


 
 

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Dental Dictionary. Mosby's Dental Dictionary. Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Veterinary Dictionary. The Veterinary Dictionary. Copyright © 2007 by Elsevier. All rights reserved.  Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Charlatan" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more

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