Make Your Point > Archived Issues > MOUNTEBANK
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connect this word to others:
Have you ever stopped to wonder why the word amount looks like mountain?
They both come from the Latin mons, "mountain." If you imagine stacking a bunch of coins or bills into a miniature mountain, you've connected the dots, etymologically: an amount is literally something that goes upward or uphill.
From there, you can connect the dots to words like...
p__amount ("important, as if high above others");
t___amount ("equal to, equally high");
r___mont_de ("bragging grandly, as if of moving mountains");
and today's mountebank ("a loud scammer who seems to mount a bench to shout at everyone").
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
make your point with...
"MOUNTEBANK"
This word comes from an Italian term meaning literally "to mount on a bench." In the 1570s, a street doctor--a man selling fake medicines--would leap up onto a bench so that everyone could see him, and then he'd shout out to everyone about his medicines and how they'd cure anything. These quack salesmen were the original mountebanks.
These days, we use the word "mountebank" more loosely to mean "someone who makes a loud, showy display to fool people, often to take their money."
Pronunciation:
MOUNT uh bank
Part of speech:
Noun, the countable kind: "he's a mountebank," "they're all a bunch of liars and mountebanks."
Other forms worth knowing:
The plural noun is "mountebanks."
The noun for the idea or practice is "mountebankery" or "mountebankism."
For an adjective, pick "mountebankish," "mountebanking," or just "mountebank" itself, as in "mountebank politics."
How to use it:
Compared to more common words like "quack" and "charlatan," the rarer "mountebank" has a loftier, more old-fashioned tone.
Pick it when you need to emphasize just how loud, obnoxious, and sleazy some scammer is.
You might refer to actual salespeople as mountebanks, especially those who try to sell fake remedies. But you can also refer to pundits, politicians, radio hosts, talk show hosts, and other public figures as mountebanks if the ideas they're "selling" to the public are ridiculous.
examples:
Consumer Health Digest this week slammed several mountebanks who, despite being banned by their government from practicing health services, still hawk herbal remedies to people with serious illnesses.
"At first blush the Republican National Convention at Cleveland next week promises to be a very dull show... The whole proceedings, in fact, will be largely formal. Some dreadful mountebank in a long-tailed coat will open them with a windy speech; then another mountebank will repeat the same rubbish in other words; then a half dozen windjammers will hymn good Cal as a combination of Pericles, Frederick the Great, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and John the Baptist..."
— H. L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe, 1924
has this page helped you understand "mountebank"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "mountebank" without saying "swindler" or "con artist."
try it out:
Fill in the blanks: "Some mountebank is charging $_____ for (some product), claiming it (does something highly unlikely)."
Example: "Some mountebank is charging $85 for a bronzer, claiming it reshapes your cheekbones, annihilates your pores, and, why not, wards off skin cancer, self-consciousness, and vampires."
before you review, play:
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
This month, we're playing "What's the Word?"
On Reddit, r/whatstheword is a community of about 55,000 members: folks who gather to help each other out when they can't think of a particular word. "It's on the tip of my tongue," they say. Or, "This word might not even exist. Help!"
In each issue this month, check out a post from the community, and see if you can come up with the word or phrase in question. We'll work our way from relatively easy to extremely hard questions as the month goes on.
From the previous issue: A community member asked, "What's the word for the state of being all or nothing? For example, you are either someone's biological child or you're not; this cannot be a transitory or fluctuating state. You cannot be in Europe and in the Pacific Ocean at the same time; it's one or the other, all or not at all." Can you think of that word or phrase?
Answer: Popular suggestions included "absolute," "dichotomous," and "mutually exclusive," but the best was "binary," meaning "characterized by two exclusive categories."
Try this today: A community member asked, "When people get older and more experienced, when they've been around the block a few times, they tend to be less easy to move to outrage or to anger or to being excitable. They hear something that a young person would get upset about and they don't think 'let's get angry and loud;' they think 'Yeah, I know that issue, I've thought about it a lot, I suppose I can think of it from both sides, and it's frustrating but let's be calm about it and try to figure out a fix instead of flying off the handle and acting like a loon.' I always think it's a word like 'pedantic' but it's not. You hear it in phrases like 'I've become a lot more THIS WORD in my old age.' Can anyone get this word?"
I'll share the answer in the upcoming issue, but if you can't wait, you can view the whole original thread here.
review this word:
1. A few near opposites of MOUNTEBANKISH are
A. MEEK and QUIET.
B. MODEST and HONEST.
C. MINDFUL and CONSIDERATE.
2. He has all the class and manners of a _____ mountebank.
A. soda-shop
B. poker-table
C. street-corner
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why the word amount looks like mountain?
"MOUNTEBANK" This word comes from an Italian term meaning literally "to mount on a bench." In the 1570s, a street doctor--a man selling fake medicines--would leap up onto a bench so that everyone could see him, and then he'd shout out to everyone about his medicines and how they'd cure anything. These quack salesmen were the original mountebanks.
Consumer Health Digest this week slammed several mountebanks who, despite being banned by their government from practicing health services, still hawk herbal remedies to people with serious illnesses.
Explain the meaning of "mountebank" without saying "swindler" or "con artist."
Fill in the blanks: "Some mountebank is charging $_____ for (some product), claiming it (does something highly unlikely)."
Spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—let your working memory empty out first.
1. A few near opposites of MOUNTEBANKISH are
|