Travel and transport

The fifth entry is the one that saves money. Composter looks like « to compost » and means nothing of the sort: it is to stamp a ticket in the machine on the platform before boarding, and a ticket that has not been stamped counts as no ticket at all. The machine is le composteur, and the sign compostez votre billet is on every French platform. Both words go back to the Latin for putting together, which is also where the garden heap gets its name: one puts vegetable matter together, the other puts a date and a number together on a piece of card. English kept only the heap. A traveller who reads the sign as advice about compost pays a fine.