A woman was looking for a mosquito spray in a store in Montréal (i.e., a spray that you spray on yourself to keep mosquitoes away).
Can you guess how she said mosquito spray in French?
There are in fact two words for mosquito in French: un moustique and un maringouin. She used moustique.
How did she say spray? We’ve in fact seen it before: she called it un pouche-pouche, which is an informal term. Any sort of spray bottle might be called a pouche-pouche in colloquial language, like a spray bottle with water in it.
Perhaps you’ll remember from a past post that a mother-to-be with a slightly detached placenta asked in an online forum if it would be okay to take a dip in the pool on hot days. Another woman provided her with this advice to keep cool:
Moi, j’ai toujours un pouche-pouche d’eau dans le réfrigérateur. Quand je me peux p’us, je m’arrose de cette eau très froide et OH que ça fait du bien!
I always keep a spray bottle filled with water in the refrigerator. When I can’t take it anymore, I spray myself with the cold water and OH does it ever feel good!
The woman looking for the mosquito spray, then, called it un pouche-pouche à moustiques.
