Pardon My French

I bought a new gas grill yesterday, and the warranty registration card had a box in the upper right-hand corner for a postage stamp.  Directions were printed in several languages:

• English - Place stamp here
• Spanish - Coloque estampilla aqui
• French - Placez le tampon ici

That last one caught me by surprise.  

I took a year or so of French in college, but I had never come across that before.

A check of a French/English dictionary shows that tampon is a word with multiple uses and meanings.  Like the most common English connotaton, it can mean a feminine hygiene product, but it can also mean a postage stamp or a stamp on your passport, a pad to scrub a pot or to buff the wax on your car.  It also can mean the buffer on your computer printer.