French for apple is pomme. French for potato is pomme de terre--which makes a potato an apple of the earth. French for butterfly is papillon. French for moth is papillon de nuit--butterfly of the night.
And sometimes the French just see things differently. A wing back chair is described in French as a chair with ears.
But I'm told the poetry can devolve into the absurd. An acquaintance at dinner the other night told me that her package of disposable earplugs bore a label that, translated into English, read "earplugs for a single use that can then be thrown away."
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