charlatan

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William Hupy
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charlatan

Postby William Hupy » Thu Jun 11, 2015 9:41 am

From French, from Italian, from "ciarlare" meaning "to prate, babble". My source posits that it may be imitative of a duck. Speaking of duck, brings me to quack - in the pejorative sense. This is from Dutch for quacksalver, meaning "hawker of salve". This word permeates the Germanic tongues to this day. My apologies to the medical profession for indulging in this mild research.
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Slava
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Re: charlatan

Postby Slava » Tue Jul 05, 2016 1:51 pm

Interesting the idea that a fake doctor, a charlatan if ever there was one, is also called a duck, er, quack.

Here is the root I found by rooting around on dictionary.com:
1595-1605; < Middle French < Italian ciarlatano, equivalent to ciarla (tore) chatterer (derivative of ciarlare to chatter; from imitative root) + ( cerre) tano hawker, quack, literally, native of Cerreto, a village in Umbria, known for its quacks
I guess that would make charlatan an eponym, no?

I do like a couple of the other forms, too. Charlatanic and charlatanism are so close to hellish evil that there must be a few great ways to make use of them.
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