[f. QUACK sb.1]
1. intr. To play the quack. a. To pretend to have medical knowledge; to dabble ignorantly in medicine. b. To talk pretentiously and ignorantly, like a quack. † Also with of.
1628. Venner, Baths of Bathe (1650), 362. In quacking for Patients he is so kind and free of his service.
1678. Butler, Hud., III. i. 330. To quack of universal cures. Ibid., 364. A Virtuoso, able To smatter, quack, and cant, and dabble.
1722. De Foe, Plague (Rtldg.), 45. Ignorant Fellows; quacking and tampering in Physick.
1756. C. Lucas, Ess. Waters, I. Pref. Enlighten then their understandings … and who then will venture to quack, or be quacked?
1876. G. Meredith, Beauch. Career, III. ii. 29. A wiseacre who went quacking about the country, expecting to upset the order of things.
2. trans. To advertise, puff, or palm off with fraudulent and boastful pretensions, as a quack-medicine or means of cure. † Also with forth. † To quack titles: to invent new titles for old books in order to make them sell.
1651. Biggs, New Disp., Pref. 9. To be Quacked forth in Bartholmew-Fayr.
1651. Cleveland, Poems, 33. Could I [in Sir Emp’ricks tone] Speak Pills in phrase, and quack destruction.
1715. Mrs. Centlivre, Gotham Elect., I. My third Son is a bookseller … he has an admirable knack at quacking Titles.
1727. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Gill ale, A notorious Imposition, which is quack’d upon the World … to be a great Restorative and Curer of Consumptions.
1830. Examiner, 26 Sept., 610/2. The Politician must be quacked, paragraphed, clubbed, and coteried into notoriety.
3. To treat after the fashion of a quack; to administer quack medicines to; to seek to remedy or put right by empirical or ignorant treatment. Also with up.
1746. H. Walpole, Lett. to Mann (1833), II. 124. If he has any skill in quacking madmen, his art may perhaps be of service now.
1757. Mrs. Griffith, Lett. Henry & Frances (1767), I. 84. I am, at present, as ‘hoarse as bondage.’ I shall therefore stay here to-night, and quack myself.
1778. Sketches for Tabernacle Frames, 17. For quacking Souls you cannot be attack’d.
1810. Bentham, Packing (1821), 144, note. Epitaph on a Valetudinarian, who quacked himself to death.
1820. Col. Hawker, Diary (1893), I. 195. I tried with bricks, baskets and everything … to quack up one of them [defective chimneys].
a. 1876. Ht. Martineau, Autobiog. (1877), I. 147. The less its condition is quacked … the better for the mind’s health.
Hence Quacked ppl. a.
a. 1876. Ht. Martineau, Autobiog. (1877), II. 461. Such exhortations are too low for even the … quacked morality of a time of theological suspense.
