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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. One who pretends to knowledge, skill, importance, etc., which he does not possess; a pretender; a quack, mountebank, or empiric.
  2. n. Synonyms Impostor, cheat, pretender; Mountebank, etc. (see quack).

Wiktionary

  1. n. A malicious trickster; a fake person, especially one who deceives for personal profit.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. One who prates much in his own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions; a quack; an impostor; an empiric; a mountebank.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a flamboyant deceiver; one who attracts customers with tricks or jokes

Etymologies

  1. 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.

Examples

  • “This huckster or streetcorner charlatan is going to be a lame duck in less than a year from now as the coward in theif dosen't realize that the independents that ELECTED him are running from his BS and LIES in droves.”

    Tom DeLay trades political stage for the real thing

  • “Frequently, the charlatan is more convincing and credible.”

    Physician Licensing, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

  • “I swear I don't know what's wrong with the people in Connecticut but to keep re-electing this charlatan is beyond me.”

    Hadassah Lieberman under attack over industry ties

  • “Harry Reid, please expel this charlatan from the caucus.”

    Lieberman on party switch: 'All options are open'

  • “Any reviewer who crafts a fanciful narratives characterising the writer as some sort of hack or charlatan is waving that gun in the air.”

    Ethics and Enthusiasm

  • “All you Obamaramazombies can take what this charlatan is peddling as gospel, but thinking people won't and don't.”

    Obama to hold 'big press conference' on Wright

  • “I think the Swift Boat political advertisement calling Kerry a charlatan is in poor taste, and if this kind of thing continues it might well backfire on the Kerry haters.”

    Primary Returns

  • “The masseur/charlatan is the author's shadow and caricature, to which he exorcistically transfers his bizarre traits and imagined failures, something like Sartre did with the autodidact in La Nausée.”

    The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 - Presentation Speech

  • “A charlatan is often a great man who was found out just a bit too soon by reporters and historians.”

    Maxims and Light Verse

  • “Not only the temporal authorities and the priests were arrayed against Him, as of old, but now He managed to arouse the opposition of the physicians of those days, who saw their practice ruined by this man whom they called a charlatan and deceiver threatening and destroying the health of the people, whose physical welfare was safe only in their (the physicians ') hands and keeping.”

    Mystic Christianity

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘charlatan’.

Comments

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  • Kristianto2010 Aware of religious charlatans who “peddled” God’s Word for their own desires, the apostle Paul wrote, “We are not, as so many, peddling the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God” 2 Corinthians 2:17. ODB Mar-25, 2011.


    Mar 25, 2011

‘charlatan’ has been looked up 5241 times, loved by 12 people, added to 117 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 14.