mountebanking

Buffoon and buffoonery appertain to low comedy, to mountebanking, to all that can amuse the populace.

A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.

Roundabout Papers 2006

If we want to preserve it, if we desire to perpetuate our institutions, the demagogue, the mountebanking politician must be squelched.

Watch Yourself Go By Ben W. [Illustrator] Warden

He recalled his first talk with Bakkus, in which he had insisted that his mountebanking was an art, and with his hard-gained knowledge of life rejected the sophistry.

The Mountebank William John Locke 1896

Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made suit of second-hand flourishes, as though that were the best they could lay their hands on.

Castellinaria and Other Sicilian Diversions Henry Festing Jones 1889

Unless Stukely also was mountebanking, the spy Mannourie for the present kept Raleigh's counsel.

Raleigh Edmund Gosse 1888

And tells me, if you please, of his likewise choosing to go ragged and naked, and grimy -- maskerading, mountebanking, in what is the real hard lot of thousands and thousands!

Tom Tiddler's Ground Charles Dickens 1841

Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking.

Roundabout Papers William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

"Kind folk, sir -- bad as their mountebanking looked the first night, sir -- why, Lord bless your honour, may they make a marine of me, if they han't set a Bungo to wait on us, Bill and I, that is -- and we has grog more than does us good -- and grub, my eye!

Tom Cringle's Log Michael Scott 1812