jué dú zhī guān
Also rendered: office of the waterways (瀆 only) · office of dredging (決 only) · office of irrigation (Hydraulic, and too modern)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The triple burner’s office, and the one member of the twelve with no nameable thing behind it: it is a function, not an organ. What issues from it is 水道, the waterways. 決 is the breach that releases, 瀆 the channel that carries — the office does both, which is why a single English noun has trouble with it.
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.
| Common English | office of the waterways / the dredger | The first gives the channel, the second the breach; neither gives both. |
| This site | office that opens the channels | 決 is release and 瀆 is the channel itself, so the rendering is made a clause: it opens, and what it opens is channels. The clumsiness is the price of not dropping half the word. |
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