Mountebank

Noun

 * 1) One who sells dubious medicines
 * There is nothing so impossible in Nature but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible but they will affirm. - John Bull
 * 1) One who sells by deception; a con artist; a charlatan.
 * 2) * 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 ——”

Verb

 * 1)  To act as a mountebank
 * Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved - Coriolanus, Wm. Shakespeare

Derived terms

 * mountebankery

Thesaurus
artist, artiste, belly dancer, blagueur, bluff, bluffer, burlesque queen, charlatan, cheat, chorine, chorus boy, chorus girl, con man, confidence man, conjurer, coryphee, dancer, dancing girl, defrauder, ecdysiast, entertainer, exotic dancer, fake, faker, female impersonator, flimflammer, fourflusher, fraud, geisha, geisha girl, guisard, guiser, gyp, hoofer, humbug, impersonator, impostor, magician, malingerer, mummer, musician, nautch girl, peeler, performer, phony, poser, poseur, prestidigitator, pretender, public entertainer, quack, quacksalver, quackster, ringer, saltimbanco, sham, shammer, sharper, show girl, singer, stripper, stripteaser, stripteuse, vaudevillian, vaudevillist