Distilling spirits

The twentieth entry is la mention d’âge, and the noun in the middle of it is a false friend that never announces itself, because it looks like a word every English reader already owns. « A mention » is slight by definition. It is the passing reference, the name dropped once, the thing brought up and then left alone — « he got a mention in the report » — and « an honourable mention » is a prize precisely because it is not one of the real ones. Une mention is the opposite kind of thing. It is wording put into a document because a rule requires it to be there, and it is read as binding. Les mentions obligatoires of a contract are the particulars that have to appear on it; la mention manuscrite is the line a signatory has to copy out by hand; and la mention d’âge on a bottle is a claim the producer can be called on. So a reader who renders la mention d’âge as « the mention of the age » turns a regulated declaration into an aside. The wording that belongs here is « the age statement ».