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.
huá
The slippery quality: a pulse that slides under the finger without resistance. It stands in the yang family and answers repletion, yet the Pingmai fa gives it a second and more exact origin: 翕奄沉，名曰滑 — the closing and sinking together of yin and yang is what produces slip, and when the two are harmonious the pulse is slippery and the positions are level. Slip is thus not simply heat; it is the sign of two qi meeting without obstruction.
chí
The slow quality: fewer beats than the breath calls for. In the yin family it pairs with astringency to name disease of the viscera, and it is the quality that forbids purgation while it lasts. Yet the same word is used in a second, technical sense in the Pingmai fa, where 榮氣和，名曰遲 — the harmony of the nutritive qi is itself called slow. A reader who takes every 遲 for a sick pulse will misread that passage, so both senses are entered below.
rú
The soft quality: a pulse supple and yielding, without hardness. In this book it is chiefly the liver's own softness — 其脉微弦，濡弱而長，是肝脉也 — and the quality a spring pulse ought to have (二月之時，脉當濡弱). It becomes a sign of loss only when it stands alone at the inch: 諸濡亡血. Softness is therefore normally a good sign, and the entry marks where it turns.
mài gū
A pulse that has lost what it should have behind it — the stomach qi that makes a pulse gentle and deliberate. The chapter reads it in one word: 脉孤爲消氣, a solitary pulse means the qi is being consumed. It belongs to the same family as chapter 7's 真藏脈, the true storing pulse that appears when the stomach qi is gone, and as 懸絶 in the same chapter — the pulse that has been cut loose from everything that fed it.
yuán
The sixth point of a fu channel, inserted between the stream and the river: 過于京骨…爲原. The five zang have five points and no separate source; the six fu have six, and the extra one is the source. The reason is stated nowhere and implied everywhere: a zang stores and its qi is reached at the transport, a fu transmits and its qi must be met where it passes. Later needling solved the asymmetry by taking the transport of a yin channel as its source, which is why the yin channels are said to have a source at all. Chapter One's twelve sources are a different count of a different thing — two for each viscus plus the fat and the membrane — and the two reckonings should not be merged.
wéi jīn
The sinews of the neck that act as stays. When the foot shaoyang sinew is diseased they tighten from left to right, the right eye cannot open, and because the left is bound to the right the injury falls on the left corner while the right foot becomes useless. The chapter names this 維筋相交, the crossing of the stays, and it is the only place in the book where a sinew disease is described by the side it crosses to.
dòng
The stirring quality: a pulse that stirs at one spot rather than flowing through the position, shaped like a bean and shaking under the finger. The book gives it two origins. In the first, yin and yang strike together and the pulse is named stirring; yang stirring brings sweat, yin stirring brings fever. In the second, a rapid pulse at the bar with no head or tail, big as a bean, is the stirring of contending qi. The ordinary verb 動 — as in 動則爲痛 — is not this quality, and the entry keeps them apart.
wèi mài
The conduit of the stomach, which chapter 46 reads to diagnose an abscess of the gastric duct, and which it then says is the pulse at the neck: 人迎者，胃脉也. When that pulse counterflows and is exceedingly full, heat has collected at the mouth of the stomach and cannot move on — and that damming is the abscess. The chapter thus ties the wrist's 胃脉 to the neck's 人迎 in one sentence.
shí
The winter quality of the pulse, stated in chapter 18 like the rest: 冬胃微石，曰平 — slightly stony with stomach qi in it is balanced; stone much and stomach qi little is kidney disease; stone alone without stomach qi is death; and stone carrying hook in it foretells illness in summer. The chapter closes the whole set on the same image: the dying kidney pulse is 辟辟如彈石, beating like stones flicked off the finger — hardness that has lost its pliancy.
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.
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.