Notifications Quack-religious leader? does it mean "both an unqualified doctor and a religious leade

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Adams, 38, took a year off to have her baby. And now, she's back, in three decidedly dissimilar films. In Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, she's the scarily pitiless wife of a captivating, blustering quack-religious leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman). In Trouble with the Curve, she's Clint Eastwood's estranged daughter. In December's On the Road, she's Viggo Mortensen's kooky, unstable common-law poet wife, playing a character based on Joan Vollmer. And next summer, she enters the superhero canon in Man of Steel, as Lois Lane opposite Henry Cavill's Clark Kent.

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/story/2012/09/26/amy-adams-masters-her-different-roles/57846198/1

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 4,131 • Replies: 34

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@oristarA,

Just means a false religious leader?

1 Reply

@oristarA,

I believe that is the intended meaning, Ori.

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Quote:

quack-religious leader

The noun 'quack' used on its own, may be, depending on context, the sound made by a duck or a person falsely claiming to be a qualified medical practitioner, but when linked to another word with a hyphen, modifies that word.

1 Reply

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

Quote:
quack-religious leader

The noun 'quack' used on its own, may be, depending on context, the sound made by a duck or a person falsely claiming to be a qualified medical practitioner, but when linked to another word with a hyphen, modifies that word.

Cool.
Thanks.

0 Replies

@JTT,

Yes. It's not very good English.

"Quack" is a term usually reserved for someone who is an unqualified person who is nevertheless practising medicine.

For a (self-appointed) religious leader, consider using the word "charlatan".

(EDIT) Sorry contrex, I wrote that before I read your post.

1 Reply

I would agree that the original and still the most common meaning of 'quack' was medical: someone (a doctor or not) who aggressively makes false claims about the curative or beneficial effects of treatments, diets, etc but the word seems to be so useful that it is sometimes borrowed and applied in a non-medical context, so that one can use it to mean "A person who dishonestly claims to have special knowledge in some field, typically in medicine."

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@McTag,

Quote:

Yes. It's not very good English.

"Quack" is a term usually reserved for someone who is an unqualified person who is nevertheless practising medicine.

It's fine English, McTag. As you yourself have noted, "usually", which clearly means that it is sometimes used just as it has been used here.

Does your advice come from research or is it right off the top of your head?

Quote:

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/quack_2

2. A charlatan; a mountebank.

Quote:

Definition of QUACK

1: charlatan 2
2: a pretender to medical skill

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quack

Quote:

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/quacksalver
quack·sal·ver

NOUN:
Archaic
A quack or charlatan.

Does shortening the original word, 'quacksalver' to 'quack' make it not very good English? Do we now experience confusion because 'quack' has more than one meaning?

2 Replies

@JTT,

Quote:

is it right off the top of your head?

It is right off the top of my head. I find textbooks sometimes unsatisfactory.

1 Reply

@JTT,

Quote:

Does shortening the original word, 'quacksalver' to 'quack' make it not very good English? Do we now experience confusion because 'quack' has more than one meaning?

That's good, I like that.

You will note that your example is from the medical field. I still hold to that, and would personally not use "quack" in any other.

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@McTag,

I guess that suggests that you missed the quackery.

1 Reply

@JTT,

I think you are stretching this a bit far in your zeal and quest to prove me wrong: I'm not sure what you think I have "missed", for all your examples point to the medical origins of the term.

Even "quacksalver", if you look beyond Merriam (and I suggest you do) is an archaic name for an ointment.

My two best dictionaries here, including the Shorter Oxford, refer to quack and quackery only in relation to the medical field. "Charlatan" has a wider connotation.

2 Replies

@McTag,

Quote:

I think you are stretching this a bit far in your zeal and quest to prove me wrong:

I hold no such zeal, McTag. I am interested in the truth.

Quote:

My two best dictionaries here, including the Shorter Oxford, refer to quack and quackery only in relation to the medical field. "Charlatan" has a wider connotation.

I have now looked beyond M-W. It seems that yours was an accurate description, for BrE.

I guess we both should have looked beyond our own dialects.

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Although nobody seems to have taken any notice, (too busy being language quacks?) I referred above to the habit words have of migrating from one field to another, or from specialised to wider uses. I think that 'quack' is a fine example. Just because in Chaucer's time a 'quacksalver' was a medical huckster, that doesn't mean that we are obliged to restrict its modern descendant to a strictly medical meaning. If we are playing 'quote the dictionary', I can hardly do better to support this view than call in aid my long time mentor, Doctor Johnson (1755): (note the order in which he arranges the definitions)

Quote:

quack:
(1) A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. / Some quacks in the art of teaching, pretend to make young gentlemen masters of the languages, before they can be masters of common sense. Felton, On the Classicks.

(2) A vain boastful pretender to physick; one who proclaims his own medical abilities in publick places.

(3) An artful tricking practitioner in physick. Despairing quacks with curses fled the place, /and vile attorneys, now an useless race.

Oxford gives this:

Quote:

a person who dishonestly claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine:

1 Reply

@McTag,

McTag wrote:

Even "quacksalver" [...] is an archaic name for an ointment.

Quacksalver is an old name for a seller of fake potions including ointments or salves.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Well it seems you have evidence for this: my evidence comes from my Shorter Oxford, which gives the meaning I quoted.

Sam Johnson's entry was instructive, from a historical point of view. I bow to that.
JTT will realise that I consider that BrE trumps AmE every time, but I don't expect everyone necessarily to agree with that.

1 Reply

The word 'quack', used alone, and not qualified in some way, is still mainly taken to mean a particular kind of medical fake - a seller of doubtful remedies, diets, etc. The entry in Dr Johnson's dictionary shows that by 1755 it had beeen extended, and had a more general meaning.

An example of the qualification I mention above is in the example quoted at the start of this thread, where the word 'quack' is attached, by means of a hyphen, to the word 'religious'.

1 Reply

@McTag,

Quote:

JTT will realise that I consider that BrE trumps AmE every time, but I don't expect everyone necessarily to agree with that.

That ole McTag sarcastic humor. Smile

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@contrex,

Quote:

Although nobody seems to have taken any notice, (too busy being language quacks?)

Are you seeking applause and acclaim for one of your infrequent trips into the land of truth, C?

0 Replies

@contrex,

Quote:

An example of the qualification I mention above is in the example quoted at the start of this thread, where the word 'quack' is attached, by means of a hyphen, to the word 'religious'.

Which brings us full circle in this exchange.

Odd, isn't it, that we quote dictionaries of 1755 to give credence to a film review from USA Today. The writer would be astonished, and who knows, even gratified. But not exonerated, in my book. I consider it a clumsy and rather ugly mistake.
Language moves and shifts, we all agree. So I will leave quackery where I believe it belongs.

1 Reply

Notifications Quack-religious leader? does it mean "both an unqualified doctor and a religious leade

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