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.
mù
The gathering point — the point on the front of the trunk where a depot's or palace's qi collects, paired with the transport point on the back. Chapter 28 names it once, in the course of an emergency: sudden fullness of the abdomen that does not give under the hand is to be taken at the channel and network vessel of the hand greater yang, which is the stomach's alarm point. The chapter does not explain the term; it assumes the reader knows that a point exists where the stomach can be reached from the front.
dú zhì
The second half of chapter 21 is organised around it. Each of the six arrives alone at the pulse — the viscus has the field to itself — and each is then given a mechanism and a treatment: greater yang is counterflow with empty qi rising, drain both exterior and interior; yang brilliance is yang doubled upon itself, drain yang and supplement yin; lesser yang is counterflow qi, and the one yang's excess. Then the greater yin is felt beating, the one yang whistles, the one yin governs. Almost every verdict ends in the same place: treat the lower transport points.
dài mài
The vessel that girdles the waist and binds the others to it. The chapter's interest in it is mechanical: it draws the sinews up, and when yang brightness fails it stops drawing, so the legs lose their use even though nothing else has changed.
gǔ kōng
The opening in a bone — the foramina and sockets through which the vessels pass — and this chapter's own word for the places one treats. It never defines the term; it enumerates it, going down the body: 髓空在腦後三分，在顱際鋭骨之下, then 一在齗基下, 一在項後中復骨下, 一在脊骨上空在風府上; 脊骨下空在凥骨下空; 數髓空在面俠鼻; 或骨空在口下當兩肩; 兩髆骨空在髆中之陽，臂骨空在臂陽，去踝四寸兩骨空之間; 股骨上空在股陽，出上膝四寸; 䯒骨空，在輔骨之上端; 股際骨空，在毛中動下; 凥骨空在髀骨之後，相去四寸. What distin-guishes this from a list of points is the last line of the section: 扁骨有滲理，湊無髓孔，易髓無空 — a flat bone seeps, joins, exchanges marrow, and has no opening. So the 空 belongs to bones of a certain kind, and a point in this chapter is a fact about a bone before it is a fact about a channel. The chapter counts with a different word, 穴 — 水俞五十七穴者, 行六穴 — which is why both are recorded here. 空 is read kōng throughout, as written, and not kǒng as in 鍼空 in chapter 24. The word occurs seven times in this chapter, and the chapter is named for it; it has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on the site before.
bó yāng
肓之原出於脖胦，脖胦一 — the source of the membrane issues at boyang, and boyang is one. It is the twelfth of the twelve sources and the only one that belongs to no viscus: with 鳩尾 it makes the pair 膏之原 and 肓之原, the fat above the diaphragm and the membrane below it. The chapter gives no location, only a count; later texts place it below the navel and call it 氣海, and 素問 40 already says 肓之原在臍下. The word is the reason the twelve are not simply five times two.
chāng yáng
Flourishing yang — the vessel later acupuncture calls 復溜, on the foot lesser yin. Chapter 41 gives it the gravest entry in the chapter: pain into the breast, blank sight, and at its worst an arched back with the tongue curled and speech gone.
jīng qì
The qi that travels the channels, and specifically its arrival — the event chapter 25 builds its whole technique around. The chapter's sequence is precise: wait for the empty to fill and the full to empty, then when the channel qi has arrived hold on to it and do not let it go. Depth and shallowness lie in the will, far and near are as one, and the hand is like gripping a tiger. The term is the hinge between the chapter's theory and its practice: everything before it is preparation, everything after it is what you do in the instant you have.
jīng suì
The channel tunnels — 經 jīng, the warp; 隧 suì, a hidden course, which 王冰 glosses 隧，潛道也 — and the word is the road a channel runs in rather than the channel itself. This chapter uses it five times and leans on every one. It says what they are for: 五藏之道，皆出於經隧，以行血氣. It says what follows if they are not kept: 血氣不和，百病乃變化而生，是故守經隧焉 — guard the tunnels, which is the sentence the chapter's whole counsel hangs on. It writes the treatment of qi on them: 氣有餘則冩其經隧…不足則𥙷其經隧. And it closes its account of method with them: 刺此者，取之經隧，取血於營，取氣於衛. The word is not the same as 脈 or 絡, and the chapter keeps the three apart: the network vessel is where blood is drawn from, the channel is what must not be struck, and the tunnel is the course that is guarded and drawn on. It has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on this site before.
chōng yáng
The pulse at the instep where the stomach channel's qi surges through, and the pulse this chapter takes when the wood circuit is in surplus. The rule the chapter follows, without ever stating it, is that a circuit in surplus strikes one phase and the pulse taken is that phase's own channel pulse: 歲木太過，風氣流行，脾土受邪 — wood in surplus strikes the earth of the spleen — and so it is 衝陽, the stomach's pulse, whose stopping means death. 絶 here is the pulse ceasing, not the channel being cut; the chapter says of all five pulses that when it is 絶 there is death and no cure.
sè mài
What the emperors of high antiquity prized and what the former teacher handed down. The chapter says three things about them: that they are the essential point of prognosis; that colour answers to the sun and pulse to the moon; and that the changes of colour answer to the pulses of the four seasons. Yang Shangshan explains the pairing by yin and yang — colour shows outwardly and so is yang and answers to the sun; the blood of the pulse is seen inwardly and so is yin and answers to the moon. Wang Bing explains it by timing: the correspondence fixes the period of the prognostication.
rèn mài
The vessel running up the front of the body. In this chapter it 'opens' (通) when the heavenly water arrives and 'empties' (虛) at seven sevens: the vessel is what carries the schedule, not what sets it.
luò mài
The vessels that branch from the channels. The chapter uses them to explain one of its six kinds of sleeplessness: when the lung's connecting vessels turn counter and cannot follow the channels up and down, they lodge in the channel, but because disease of the connecting vessels is slight, the person rises and rests as usual and only the breathing gives it away.