Aquaculture

La puesta y la incubación se controlan por temperatura: spawning and incubation are controlled by temperature. Spawning — and la puesta is the noun Spanish builds from poner, to put or to lay, which then spreads across a set of English words that are related to nothing at all. Here it is the laying of eggs, in a fish or in a hen. La puesta de sol is the sunset, the sun putting itself down. La puesta en marcha is the commissioning of a plant, the start-up. La puesta al día is an update, and la puesta en escena the staging of a play. English has to fetch a different word each time, and none of the five is a relative of any other. The rule for reading it is simple and entirely reliable: the sense is never in puesta, it is in what follows it.