Did you know? In medieval times, people claiming medical skills they did not have roamed throughout Italy, selling medicine that was often completely without worth. Many of these pretenders reputedly came from a village called Cerreto, and as a result, cerretano (meaning inhabitant of Cerreto) became an epithet for a quack physician. In addition, these frauds used a practiced patter to attract customers, rather like the chatter of a circus barker. The Italian word for chatter is ciarlare, and chattering was so associated with the cerretano that the spelling of the word shifted to ciarlatano. By the early 17th century, we had anglicized the Italian word to charlatan and adopted it as our own.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 05:39:45 +0000