yǒng qiè
Also rendered: boldness and timidity (Keeps the pair as dispositions rather than virtues) · courage and fear (Stronger words than the pair carries here) · the bold and the faint-hearted (Right in sense, loses the abstract shape) · yong qie (Bare transliteration)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Temperament treated as a clinical datum. Everything chapter 21 lists — walking at night, falling, taking fright, wading into water — happens to everyone; what differs is what happens next. In the brave the qi moves through and the matter closes; in the timid it lodges, and a lodging becomes a disease. So the chapter makes this the announced rule of examination: look at whether a person is bold or timid, and at the state of bone, flesh and skin, and you have the method. Note that the pair is not a judgement: the text never praises one side, it only says the prognosis is written there.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Wiseman & Feng | courage and fear | Their list tends to pair these two as states rather than as traits. |
| Unschuld | bold and fearful | He keeps them descriptive, and translates each pairing freshly. |
| This site | boldness and timidity | Nothing in the passage rewards the word courage: 著 and 行 are mechanical, not moral, and the chapter reads the same in both directions — this is a body that clears its qi, or one that keeps it. Abstract nouns also leave room for the point the chapter immediately draws, that the pulse underneath changes with them. |
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