Quack vs Sham - What's the difference?
quack | sham |
To make a noise like a duck.
A fraudulent healer or incompetent professional, especially a doctor of medicine; an impostor who claims to have qualifications to practice medicine.
* 1662 : Rump: or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs Relating to Late Times, Vol. II , by ‘the most Eminent Wits’
* 1720 : William Derham, Physico-theology
* 1843 , '', book 2, ch. 8, ''The Electon
A charlatan.
Carlyle
(slang) A doctor.
To practice or commit quackery.
(obsolete) To make vain and loud pretensions; to boast.
* Hudibras
falsely presented as having medicinal powers.
Intended to deceive; false.
counterfeit; unreal
* Jowett
A fake; an imitation that purports to be genuine.
Trickery, hoaxing.
A false front, or removable ornamental covering.
A decorative cover for a pillow.
To deceive, cheat, lie.
* L'Estrange
To obtrude by fraud or imposition.
* L'Estrange
To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign.
As a noun quack
is the sound made by a duck or quack can be a fraudulent healer or incompetent professional, especially a doctor of medicine; an impostor who claims to have qualifications to practice medicine.As a verb quack
is to make a noise like a duck or quack can be to practice or commit quackery.As an adjective quack
is falsely presented as having medicinal powers.As a proper noun sham is
syria.quack
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) *.Verb
(en verb)- The more breadcrumbs I threw on the ground, the more they quacked .
- Do you hear the ducks quack ?
Derived terms
*References
Etymology 2
(wikipedia quack) c 1630, shortening of quacksalver, from (etyl)Noun
(en noun)- That doctor is nothing but a lousy quack !
- Polly (to security guard, referring to Dr. Feingarten): Are you going to let that shyster in there?
- Dr. Feingarten': I could sue you, Polly. A shyster is a disreputable lawyer. I'm a ' quack .
- - From the motion picture
- Tis hard to say, how much these Arse-wormes do urge us, We now need no Quack but these Jacks for to purge us, [...]
- After ?ome Months, the Quack gets privately to Town, [...]
- ‘if we are ourselves valets, there shall ‘exist no hero for us; we shall not know the hero when we see him;’ - we shall take the quack for a hero; and cry, audibly through all ballot-boxes and machinery whatsoever, Thou art he; be thou King over us!
- Quacks political; quacks scientific, academical.
Synonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* (l)Verb
(en verb)- To quack of universal cures.
Adjective
(-)- Don't get your hopes up; that's quack medicine!
sham
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- It was only a sham wedding: they didn't care much for one another but wanted their parents to stop hassling them.
- They scorned the sham independence proffered to them by the Athenians.
Synonyms
* mock * See alsoAntonyms
* genuine * sincere * realNoun
(en noun)- The time-share deal was a sham .
- A con-man must be skilled in the arts of sham and deceit.
Derived terms
* shamateurSee also
* pillow shamVerb
(shamm)- Fooled and shammed into a conviction.
- We must have a care that we do not sham fallacies upon the world for current reason.