fakirs

Noun

fakir (plural fakirs)

1. A religious mendicant who owns no personal property.
2. (Hinduism, more loosely) An ascetic mendicant, especially one who performs feats of endurance or apparent magic.
   • The preposterous altruism too![…]Resist not evil. It is an insane immolation of self—as bad intrinsically as fakirs stabbing themselves or anchorites warping their spines in caves scarcely large enough for a fair-sized dog.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
3. (derogatory) Someone who takes advantage of the gullible through fakery, especially of a spiritual or religious nature.
   • He denounces no one until he has all the damaging facts in hand, very frequently backed up with affidavits. He 'Lawsonized' certain stock jobbers and financial fakirs of London before the Boston advertising man was heard of.1905, Eclectic Magazine, Foreign Literature, Science, and Art