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The Idiot vocabulary
140 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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mountebank
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synonyms: empiric, quacksalver, medicaster, ambodexter, sharper, thimblerigger, dudder, duffer, grifter ???
► definition
Definition:1. a con artist; one who deceives others to separate them from their money; charlatan2. a hawker who sells quack remedies (this negative connotation developed over time - note that in Hamlet the connotation is different)
► uses
Uses:
And you, you mountebank, what are you laughing at?" she cried, turning suddenly on Lebedeff's nephew. "' We refuse ten thousand roubles; we do not beseech, we demand!' As if he did not know that this idiot will call on them tomorrow to renew his offers of money and friendship. You will, won't you?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Idiot (1887)
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Laertes: I will do't; And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword. I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death
WIlliam Shakespeare. Hamlet
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after a while she tired of it, and there being no one for her to talk to but her maids and the chaplain—a clumsy man deep in his books—why, she would have strolling players out from Vicenza, mountebanks and fortune-tellers from the market-place, travelling doctors and astrologers, and all manner of trained animals.
Edith Wharton. Crucial Instances: The Duchess at Prayer (1901)
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Ambroise Paré. The Workes of that famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey (published: Latin in 1579, English in 1649), p.519, https://archive.org/stream/workesofthatfamo00par#page/519/mode/1up
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The fact is he turns out an incomparable King, and deserves all the encomiums that are lavished on him. All the mountebankery which signalised his conduct when he came to the throne has passed away with the excitement which caused it, and he is as dignified as the homeliness and simplicity of his character will allow him to be.
Charles Greville. The Greville Memoirs, volume 2 (Nov. 17, 1830)
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