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Definition of Quacksalver
1. n. One who boasts of his skill in medicines and salves, or of the efficacy of his prescriptions; a charlatan; a quack; a mountebank.
Definition of Quacksalver
1. Noun. (archaic) One falsely claiming to possess medical or other skills, especially one who dispenses potions, ointments, etc. supposedly having curative powers. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Quacksalver
1. [n -S]
Medical Definition of Quacksalver
1. One who boasts of his skill in medicines and salves, or of the efficacy of his prescriptions; a charlatan; a quack; a mountebank. Origin: D. Kwakzalver; cf. Kwakzalven to quack or boast of one's salves. See Quack, Salve. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)
Lexicographical Neighbors of Quacksalver
Literary usage of Quacksalver
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. The Fair Maid of Perth, Or, Saint Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (1878)
"... I would pound thee, quacksalver, in thine own mortar, and beat up thy wretched
carrion with flower of brimstone, the only real medicine in thy booth ..."
2. Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary, Historical and by John Stephen Farmer, William Ernest Henley (1902)
"See quacksalver. Verb, (old booksellers').—See quot.—BAILEY (1726). 1715. ...
I could say what I know ... but I profess myself no quacksalver. 1608. ..."
3. A Glossary: Or, Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to by Robert Nares, James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Thomas Wright (1901)
"The word quacksalver is in Johnson, and illustrated by examples there ; but it
has long been so much disused, tliat to some readers it might require ..."
4. A Dictionary of English Etymology by Hensleigh Wedgwood, John Christopher Atkinson (1872)
"quacksalver. The salving of wounds was so generally taken as a type of the healing
art, that no reasonable doubt can be entertained of the meaning of the ..."
5. A Dictionary of English Etymology by Hensleigh Wedgwood, John Christopher Atkinson (1872)
"It has usually been explained as having reference to the noisy outcry with which
the quacksalver or mountebank (G. Marktschreier) vaunts his wares. ..."
6. Publications by English Dialect Society (1886)
"... and thence the name was applied to itinerant pretenders to such skill, to
mendicants, and generally to idle livers. The plant called quacksalver's ..."
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