(n.) One who prates much in his own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions; a quack; an impostor; an empiric; a mountebank.
Example Sentences:
(1) "This crowd of charlatans ... look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised."
(2) That shameless charlatan is always stealing my best lines ... usually before I think of them.
(3) For every cinephile that delights in Quentin Tarantino's penchant for opulent dialogue and magpie film-historian's eye, there's another who sees the US director of Reservoir Dogs , Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies as a garish charlatan who survives on a habit of plundering the past.
(4) Firstly because it's a guess from a self-confessed non-scientist (I won't accept charlatan, sorry NeverMindTheBollocks).
(5) When you look at the scientific studies carried out on people trying to lose weight, it's hard not to think that all the blockbuster diet gurus are charlatans – if not, one can only assume that they are incredibly hopeful and optimistic people.
(6) Well, we didn't need the debt crisis to learn that impending doom – Greeks have been living for over a year with a default hanging over their heads – creates a perfect market for charlatans.
(7) There are bad days, increasingly so for them, but then there are days like this that break new boundaries of cataclysmic play and make those of us who predicted a close series seem like end-of-the-pier charlatan soothsayers.
(8) "Now," he says bitterly, "if you research my name on the internet, after the first few items you find I'm a charlatan.
(9) What is the ingredient the rest of the time, you knife-wielding charlatan?” Brand asks.
(10) Ukip is a party of con artists, myth peddlers, charlatans and professional shysters.
(11) When this billionaire plutocrat charlatan – who poses as a man of the people as he enriches himself at their expense – implements a $5.5tn cut that shamelessly shovels money into the pockets of affluent and wealthy Americans, he should be resisted.
(12) Nick Coyle casts his audience as visitors to a meditation class, with the Aussie comic in character as a guru-cum-charlatan wearing a scented candle on his head.
(13) Hillmer's charlatanism was proven by the Medical Chancellery at Petersburg when he visited Russia in 1751.
(14) In 1751 the oculist Joseph Hillmer was expelled as charlatan from Petersburg by an expert opinion, which was founded on 125 case reports on his Russian clients, amongst them 60 suffering from cataracts, which had been couched on 80 eyes.
(15) Yet still we trust these charlatans with our money.
(16) 6.02pm BST My verdict One commenter said today that any answer to this question other than "we need to wait and see" would be no better than the work of a "non-science charlatan".
(17) Health workers with secondary qualification and those who graduated from colleges of medicine also commit charlatanism if their healing activity is out of their professional competence.
(18) When a physician performs unprofessional activity breaking the rules of his profession, which is colloquially interpreted as charlatanism, the term "malpractice" is used.
(19) The Charlatans frontman, Tim Burgess, stepped in to present her 10am slot.
(20) A by no means exhaustive list of his political interventions includes: health – he forced ministers to listen to his gormless support for homeopathic treatments and every other variety of charlatanism and quackery; defence – he protested against cuts in the armed forces; justice – he complained about ordinary people’s access to law, or as he put it: “I dread the very real and growing prospect of an American-style personal injury culture”; political correctness – he opposes equality as I suppose a true royal must; GM foods – he thinks they’re dangerous, regardless of evidence; modern architecture – he’s against; and eco-towns – he’s for, as long as he has a say in their design.
Mountebank
Definition:
(n.) One who mounts a bench or stage in the market or other public place, boasts of his skill in curing diseases, and vends medicines which he pretends are infalliable remedies; a quack doctor.
(n.) Any boastful or false pretender; a charlatan; a quack.
(v. t.) To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull.
(v. i.) To play the mountebank.
Example Sentences:
(1) This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
(2) He was the first and last ophthalmologist to travel from court to court of Europe with a cavalcade of outriders and supporters; and although he was caricatured as a mountebank, there was an element of genius about him, and his innovations, especially in squint surgery, demand that he should not be forgotten.