This little sign in a flowerbed outside the Complexe Desjardins in Montréal reminds people in a unique way to avoid leaving their cigarette butts among the plants:
Le mégot n’est pas un engrais!
SVP utilisez les cendriers
1. Mégot
Un mégot is a cigarette butt, the part of the cigarette that’s left over after it’s been smoked. This sign tells us that cigarette butts are not fertilisers, le mégot n’est pas un engrais!
2. Cendrier
The sign also tells smokers where to put their cigarette butts: in the ashtrays, les cendriers. The word un cendrier can refer to both an ashtray in someone’s home and the tall vertical ones in public places.
3. Botch
In Québec, you may hear another word for mégot during informal conversations: un botch (de cigarette).
Le cendrier était plein de botchs de cigarette.
The ashtray was full of cigarette butts.
Jette pas tes botchs par terre!
Don’t throw your butts on the ground!
4. Botcher
You may also hear the verb botcher, which refers to putting out the cigarette. In fact, you’ve already heard this verb before in a video from a past entry: Jean-François Mercier comically remarks on the fact that his anti-nicotine attack dog Roxie can’t put out cigarettes herself.
Roxie, je le sais que tu comprends pas pourquoi qu’y'a des gens qui fument. J’ai jamais fumé, pis t’as jamais fumé non plus. Pis ça tombe bien parce que t’aurais pas été capable de botcher, à cause que t’es[-t-]un chien…
Roxie, I know you don’t understand why there are people who smoke. I’ve never smoked, and you’ve never smoked either. Which is a good thing because you’d have never been able to put your cigarette out, ‘cos you’re a dog…
Here’s the entire French transcript and translation into English.
5. Puff
Another informal word used in Québec is une puff, which is a puff or drag of smoke. We could also spell it as une poffe. In a scene from the television show Les Parent, Natalie asks for a puff of cigarette from another character:
Me passerais-tu une puff? Juste une p’tite…
Can I have a puff? Just a little one…
[Les Parent, season 4, episode 9, Radio-Canada,
Montréal, 7 November 2011]
Similarly:
Veux-tu une poffe?
Donne-moi une poffe.
Do you want a puff?
Give me a puff.
And a play on words…
Here’s another image related to smoking, this time from Place Ville Marie. The sign reads:
Aire sans fumée
Smoke-free zone
Une aire is a zone.
There’s a play on words happening here. You’ll notice that the letter e in aire is in a different colour to the rest of the text. If we drop that letter, we’re left with:
Air sans fumée
Smoke-free air
Both aire and air are pronounced the same way.
