saltimbanque
saltimbanque noun: tumbler, street acrobat.
Noun
saltimbanque (plural saltimbanques)
- Tumbler, street acrobat.
- Circus is a simple, romantic ballet, set to some suitable music by France’s Jacques Ibert, laid in a village square of placardized baroque, and dressed in costumes that suggest the saltimbanques of Picasso.1956 June 11, “The New Pictures”, in Time
- Another day my hands might wander over the keys with the felicity of a Borgia’s murderous paw. Choosing the staccato technique, I would ape the quibblers and quipsters of the Ghibellines. Or put it on, like a saltimbanque performing for a feeble-minded monarch.1960, Henry Miller, Nexus, Obelisk Press, Chapter 13
Forms of saltimbanque
| plural | saltimbanques |
|---|---|
| alternative form | saltimbank |
Origin of saltimbanque
From French saltimbanque, from Italian saltimbanco, from saltare (“to jump”) + banco (“bench, platform, stage”).
Questions about saltimbanque
- What does saltimbanque mean?
- Saltimbanque means tumbler, street acrobat.
- What part of speech is saltimbanque?
- Saltimbanque is a noun.
- What is the plural of saltimbanque?
- The plural of saltimbanque is saltimbanques.
Words near saltimbanque in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: saltimbanque (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “saltimbanque.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saltimbanque. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.