{"id":2657,"date":"2026-01-29T11:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2657"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:51:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:51:23","slug":"word-of-the-week-charlatan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2026\/01\/29\/word-of-the-week-charlatan\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Charlatan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Snake<\/a>Our trivia team, “Electric Mayhem,” got stumped by this word this week, so I decided I’d cover it.<\/p>\n

Our trivia-host stated that he wanted a term that came from the Italian word “to babble” for a type of confidence man. We wrote down this week’s word, but we figured that the origin of our word was French, so we erased it. We’d have still lost that round, and so it goes.<\/p>\n

Like “Montebank<\/a>” that I’ve covered here before, this week’s work is of Italian parentage yet it shares French roots as well. I’ll use the same image. Whereas Montebank comes from the monta in banco<\/em>, “to stand on a bench” TO sell that snake-oil, “Charlatan” has a more complex etymology. From The Etymology Dictionary Online<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“one who pretends to knowledge, skill, importance, etc.,” 1610s, from French\u00a0charlatan\u00a0“mountebank, babbler” (16c.), from Italian\u00a0ciarlatano\u00a0“a quack,” from\u00a0ciarlare\u00a0“to prate, babble,” from\u00a0ciarla\u00a0“chat, prattle,” which is perhaps imitative of ducks’ quacking.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today we have charlatans online, promising us miracles. We have others in positions of great power. We have many who blog. I hope this post, at least, might babble a bit but present you with an accurate origin on a still-popular word.<\/p>\n

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image of \u201cProfessor Thaddeus Schmidlap, resident snake-oil salesman at the Enchanted Springs Ranch and Old West theme park\u201d courtesy of\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>, via the Library of Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our trivia team, “Electric Mayhem,” got stumped by this word this week, so I decided I’d cover it. Our trivia-host stated that he wanted a term that came from the Italian word “to babble” for a type of confidence man. We wrote down this week’s word, but we figured that the origin of our word … Continue reading Word of the Week! Charlatan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-GR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2658,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657\/revisions\/2658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}