mountebankery

At times Cord's own'talents verged on mountebankery. and the best of mountebanks had no little skill at thievery and its adjunctive crafts.

Night Arrant Gygax, Gary 1987

There is no fun going on now-a-days -- no quackery, no mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843 Various

He was, when he chose to lay aside his mountebankery, an excellent and inspiring conductor.

Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I -- 1841-1857 Charles Larcom 1921

Much was required of him in a world where a high fantastical acrobatic mountebankery was almost a matter of ceremony, where riders stand on their heads in passing their rivals and cooks punt a casserole over their heads to the wall behind by way of giving notice: much was required of him and he proved worthy.

George Borrow The Man and His Books Edward Thomas 1897

Paragot's travesty of mountebankery or rags, but which singularly enough seemed hidden beneath his conventional garb -- the inborn and incommunicable quality of the high-bred gentleman.

The Belovéd Vagabond William John Locke 1896

I wish I could fathom Aunt Jessica's reasons for her attempts at involving me in her social mountebankery.

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne : a Novel William John Locke 1896

I must insist on this, so that you can recognize that the young and successful mountebank, although dead set on the perfection of his mountebankery, and, in serious fact, never dreaming of

The Mountebank William John Locke 1896

Now, Lackaday in his manuscript relates this English episode, not so much as an appeal to pity for the straits to which he was reduced, although he winces at its precarious mountebankery, and his sensitive and respectable soul revolts at going round with the mendicant's hat and thanking old women and children for pennies, as in order to correlate certain influences and coincidences in his career.

The Mountebank William John Locke 1896

He could forgive every other sort of mountebankery, but not that.

The Antichrist 1895

Most questionable of all, perhaps, is the merely mechanical mountebankery -- the blanks, and the dashes, and the rows of stops, the black pages and the marbled pages which he employs to force a guffaw from his readers.

The English Novel George Saintsbury 1889