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.
xián
The spring quality of the pulse, and the pattern after which all five seasonal qualities are stated in chapter 18: 春胃微弦曰平 — slightly string-like, with stomach qi still in it, is the balanced pulse; string much and stomach qi little is liver disease; string alone, with no stomach qi at all, is death; and string appearing inside the autumn pulse foretells illness when spring comes. At the end of the chapter the same image returns stripped of its moderation: the dying liver pulse is 如新張弓弦, like a newly drawn bowstring.
shàng gōng
The physician who acts before the disease has a form. Chapter 26 gives the definition in one sentence: he rescues the sprout, he must see the qi of the three regions and nine indicators first, and he rescues while the qi can still be fully regulated and nothing has yet been ruined. The contrast with 下工 is not about skill with the needle but about when the work begins — and the chapter has just spent a long passage explaining that what the superior physician sees does not appear outwardly at all, which is why everyone else fails to see it.
hóng
The surging quality: a pulse that comes full, broad and high, like flood water. It belongs to summer and to the heart, and the book states both in one line: 春弦秋浮，冬沉夏洪, and 腎沉心洪，肺浮肝弦. In disease it appears after heavy sweating (脉洪大者，與桂枝湯如前法) and as the herald of a fatal collapse (脉浮而洪，身汗如油). The same fullness can therefore mean the season's health or the last movement of a dying man, and the company it keeps decides which.
hé yú
The point of the breastbone, used in this chapter as the middle landmark of the trunk. Two measurements hang on it: from the supraclavicular fossa down to it is nine cun, and from it down to the heavenly pivot is eight cun. Each length carries a consequence — over nine the lung is large, under it the lung is small; over eight the stomach is large, under it the stomach is small. The bone is thus not only a landmark but a gauge of the organs behind it.