Soil science

La suela de labor impide que la raíz baje: the layer a plough presses smooth, season after season, at exactly the depth it always runs. Spanish names it after a shoe. La suela is the sole, and that is very nearly the only thing the word means. English has « sole » too and spends it on three jobs at once: the sole of a shoe, the flatfish on the menu, which in Spanish is el lenguado, and « sole » in the sense of only. None of the three is this. For the buried layer English reaches into the kitchen instead and says « pan » — a plough pan, a hardpan, an iron pan. So romper la suela de labor is to break the plough pan, and two languages have picked two different household objects for the same thing standing in a root's way.