sb. and a. Forms: 7 chiarlatan, charlitan, (schareleton), 7– charlatan. [a. F. charlatan ‘a mountebanke, a cousening drug-seller, a pratling quack-salver, a tatler, babler’ (Cotgr.), ad. It. ciarlatano = ciarlatore babbler, patterer, mountebank, f. ciarlare to babble, patter, act the mountebank, f. ciarla, chat, prattle; cf. Sp., Pg. charlar, Wallachian charrar, ONF. charer (Diez) to prattle, babble. Cf. quack to gabble like a duck, talk like a Cheap Jack, puff patent medicines, act as a charlatan.]
A. sb.
† 1. A mountebank or Cheap Jack who descants volubly to a crowd in the street; esp. an itinerant vendor of medicines who thus puffs his ‘science’ and drugs. (Now included under 2.)
[1605. B. Jonson, Volpone, II. ii. (1607), D 3 c. I cannot indure, to see the rable of these ground Ciarlitani, that spread their clokes on the pauement.
1611. Coryat, Crudities, Panegyr. Verses, c 2 b. Sometimes to heare the Ciarlatans.]
1618. D. Belchier, Hans Beer-pot, D j b. I think the Serieant is grown Mountebancke To cling by shifts, hey, passe, passe, Italian grown; a sharking Charlatan.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., I. iii. 11. Saltimbancoes, Quacksalvers, and Charlatans, deceive them in lower degrees.
1678. Butler, Hud., III. II. 971. For Chiarlatans can do no good, Until th’ are mounted in a Crowd.
1771. Mrs. Harris, in Priv. Lett. 1st Ld. Malmesbury, I. 214. At the masquerade … Mr. Banbury was a most excellent friseur, Lord Berkeley a charlatan.
[1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. iii. 145. He is called a charlatan, quack, and mountebank.]
† b. One who puffs his wares; a puffer.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, Pref. Though in the foregoing Paragraph, I have discover’d something of the Charlatan in the behalf of my Bookseller.
2. An empiric who pretends to possess wonderful secrets, esp. in the healing art; an empiric or impostor in medicine, a quack.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), II. 197. Charlatans make Diseases fit their Medicines, and not their Medicines Diseases.
1710. Addison, Tatler, No. 240, ¶ 3. Ordinary Quacks and Charlatans.
[1762. J. Brown, Poetry & Mus., iii. 34, note. Charlatans,—a Word with which we have none precisely correspondent in our Language: It signifies here, one who is a Pretender to Medecine by the Arts of Magic.]
1791. Burke, Let. Memb. Nat. Assembly, Wks. 1842, I. 478. The nation is sick, very sick, by their medicines. But the charlatan tells them that what is passed cannot be helped.
1841. Brewster, Mart. Sci., II. iv. (1856), 153. The charlatans, whether they deal in moral or in physical wonders, form a race which is never extinct.
1860. Tanner, Pregnancy, i. 3.
3. An assuming empty pretender to knowledge or skill; a pretentious impostor.
1809. Edin. Rev., April, 193. The Alexandrian sages [Proclus, etc.] … were in fact the charlatans of antient philosophy.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes (1858), 268. A questionable step for me … to say … that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan.
1858. Froude, Hist. Eng., III. xvi. 363. His [Cromwell’s] true creed was a hatred of charlatans.
1872. Geo. Eliot, Middlem., V. xlv. 335. A charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans.
B. adj. Of or pertaining to a charlatan; empirical, quack.
1671. [R. MacWard], True Non-conf., 376. But the schareleton tricks of a pitiful impostor.
1852. Gladstone, Glean., IV. ii. 141. Theatrical, not to say charlatan and mountebank, politics.
1862. ‘Shirley’ (J. Skelton), Nugæ Crit., xi. 472. Because I love freedom … I hesitate to apply the charlatan quackeries which may fatally hurt all that is best and most living in English liberty.
