Talk:Foutin

Evidence?
Is there any evidence for these assertions? If so, can it be provided? If not, should these assertions be removed? As it is, I am adding a 'citation needed' tag, provisionally, to the more outlandish assertions. 25022014a (talk) 23:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The following sentence is so bizarre as to seem a joke:

'On windy days the beadle and sexton were kept busy in picking up these imitations of decrepit and penitent male members from the floor, whither the wind wafted them, much to the annoyance and disturbance of the female portions of the congregation, whose devotions are said to have been sadly interfered with.'

This is not sourced, and no account is given of how such putative waxen images

('it was customary for the afflicted to make a wax image of their impotent and flaccid organ, which was deposited on the shrine')

could have been 'wafted' thither or indeed anywhere, since, on the mere lexical-semantic level, the word 'waft' is decomposed into such requisite features of the argument as lightness, and of the verb as carrying the argument in a light, gravity-resisting, sometime-airborne manner. Thus this sentence in particular seems nothing more than a poor attempt at lyricism within what is an article written in a manner unbecoming of an encyclopaedia. If left long as it stands, it will require considerable revision. 25022014a (talk) 00:02, 3 April 2014 (UTC)