charlatannoun [ C ]
uk/ˈʃɑː.lə.tən/us/ˈʃɑːr.lə.t̬ən/disapprovinga person who pretends to have skills or knowledge that they do not have, especially in medicine
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Faking & pretending
- a wolf in sheep's clothing idiom
- affect
- assume
- believe
- bluff
- changeling
- come the raw prawn idiom
- feign
- fraud
- go through the motions idiom
- guise
- impostor
- play at sth
- play possum idiom
- play sth out
- play-acting
- pose as sb
- professed
- purport
- quack
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Examples from literature
- Charlatans and showmen and medical quacks call things facts that are not facts.
- I have never tried to break through his guard, but I feel certain that he is a deliberate charlatan.
- In his assumption of the seer, Blake was not a charlatan: he believed fully in his supernatural privileges.
- One of his main weaknesses was a habit of boasting and exaggerating his own powers, which at first imposed upon a vulgar audience and then left them under the impression that he was a charlatan.
- The doctor charlatan steals your money under the guise of being your benefactor.