Un mot by any other nom

Living in a bilingual household, and I must confess to being the least bilingual of the five, I am daily exposed to two vocabularies, English and French. Perhaps it’s my anglophone outsider’s perspective, but certain words in French just seem far nicer than the things they represent.

Take the everyday term la poubelle; French for garbage. The pou part is perfectly in character. It’s that belle (or beautiful) inside that seems to oppose the notion of the fly-catching bin at the end of your driveway. Picture rubbish in ballet slippers. Worth a smile, every time you say it.