Each entry gives the term in traditional and simplified form, its pinyin, the senses it carries in the classical corpus, the passages where it does real work, and how published translations have rendered it.
shèn zhī
The fatty, unctuous substance of the kidney — a phrase the Suwen uses once, in this chapter, where it is needed as something that can dry up. Withered and no longer growing, it is the first link in the chain the chapter traces to bone impediment: no growth in the kidney, no filling of the marrow, cold reaching the bone, joints drawn up.
shèn qì
What drives growth in the seven-year cycles: teeth, hair, and the capacity to conceive. The single most important caution for a new reader is that 腎 here is a system of functions rather than the organ of modern anatomy.
tóng qì
Kindred qi — 同 tóng, the same; 氣 qì, qi — the qi that is of a piece with what it belongs to. 《說文》 has 同，合會也, brought together, which is close enough: this is the qi that belongs, against the qi that is only lodging. The chapter uses it once, in 人有客氣，有同氣, and never again, and it does not say what it means. 馬蒔 takes it as a person's own qi against invading evil; 張介賓 takes both words from the doctrine of the circuit qi, so that 同氣 is the seasonal qi that repeats year after year against the qi of the year that never does. The chapter moves straight on to the rule about the passages, so both readings are left standing. The word has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on this site before.