Mountebank

Part of speech: noun (n.)

1. 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. Such is the weakness and easy credulity of men, that a mountebank ... is preferred before an able physician. Whitlock.

2. Any boastful or false pretender; a charlatan; a quack. Nothing so impossible in nature but mountebanks will undertake. Arbuthnot.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

To cheat by boasting and false pretenses; to gull. [R.] Shak.

Part of speech: verb (v.)

To play the mountebank.