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.
nì sì shí
The name for a pulse that contradicts the season it is in. Getting a lung pulse in spring, a kidney pulse in summer, a heart pulse in autumn, a spleen pulse in winter — each the pulse of the quarter that this season's viscus cannot conquer — and their arrival hanging, cut off, sunken and rough, is one kind. The other is having no seasonal form at all: sunken and rough in spring and summer, floating and large in autumn and winter. To this the chapter adds a short list of outright contradictions — heat disease with a calm pulse, diarrhoea with a large pulse, blood loss with a replete pulse — and says plainly that they are difficult to treat. Along with the four difficulties of form, qi, colour and pulse, these are what a physician is told to recognise and state out loud.
jì zhì
The arrangement by which the spleen, having no season of its own, governs eighteen days at the turn of each of the four. Chapter 29 states it in a single clause and then explains why it must be so: the spleen is earth, earth grows the ten thousand things, and what grows everything cannot be confined to a quarter of the year. Eighteen days four times over is seventy-two, and the number is not arbitrary — it is what is left when the four seasons have each taken their own. Later medicine turned this into the doctrine that the spleen is in charge at the hinges between seasons.
sī tiān
The qi that has charge of the upper half of the year. Six qi take it in turn — 少陽、陽明、太陽、厥陰、少陰、太陰 — and this chapter gives all six, each with what it does: 少陽司天，火氣下臨，肺氣上從；陽明司天，燥氣下臨，肝氣上從. The form is fixed: the governing qi descends, and the viscus whose phase it opposes rises to answer it, so that what the year does to a man is written as one qi moving and one organ following. The same six come back later in the passage on the five classes, where 司天 decides which kind of creature is quiet, which breeds, and which does not come to term at all. Its counterpart is 在泉, which has charge of the lower half; the two are never both in the same half of the year.
zhǔ suì
To preside over a year — of the five circuits, each of which governs one year in turn, and of the qi that is said to govern it. The chapter opens by reporting that this is all the emperor was told (正五氣之各主歲爾) and closes by asking what governs when the year is governed badly. The answer is the rule of excess and deficit, and it is the one place in the chapter where the doctrine of the circuits is stated in terms a physician can use: 氣有餘，則制己所勝，而侮所不勝; 其不及，則己所不勝侮而乘之.
kè zhǔ
The guest qi and the host qi, and the one contest in the chapter that admits no revenge: 帝曰：客主之勝復柰何？歧伯曰：客主之氣，勝而無復也. Everywhere else in the discourse a victory invites a return — 有勝之氣，其必來復也 — and the whole earlier passage on 勝復之動 turns on that. The guest and the host are the exception, because the year's qi and the place's qi meet only once and part: what wins, wins. The chapter then draws the rule of conduct from it — 帝曰：其逆從何如？歧伯曰：主勝逆，客勝從，天之道也 — the host's victory runs against the order and the guest's runs with it, which is why the passage on treatment that follows says 必安其主客.
jiān chéng
Metal going to excess. 金曰堅成 — metal is called hard completion — and its 紀 is 收引: 堅成之紀，是謂收引。天氣潔，地氣明，陽氣隨陰治化，燥行其政，物以司成，收氣繁布，化洽不終. The qi of heaven is clean and the qi of earth clear, the yang follows the yin in governing, the dry carries out its governance, things are brought to their completion by it, the reaping qi spreads thickly, and the transforming reaches everywhere and does not finish — the last clause is the excess showing: autumn does the whole year's work and leaves nothing for winter. Its attributes: 其化成，其氣削，其政肅，其令鋭切，其動暴折瘍疰，其德霧露蕭飋，其變肅殺凋零…其象秋，其經手太陰陽明，其藏肺肝…其病喘喝，胸憑仰息. Its viscera are the lung and the liver — the metal and the wood it withholds from — and its illness is the breath that cannot be let out: 喘喝, gasping and hoarse.
tiān fú
The first of the three agreements in 應天爲天符，承歲爲歲直，三合爲治. 應天 — answering to heaven — means the circuit qi of the year matches the qi that presides above it; when the two fit, the year is a 天符. The chapter gives the three in ascending order, says that 三合 is what makes a year governable, and then moves on. The full working-out belongs to the later chapters of the book, where the same three are set out with what follows from each; here the word is a name and a metaphor, 符 being the tally whose two halves have to close.
fú míng
Fire falling short. 火曰伏明 — fire is called hidden brightness — and its 紀 is 勝長: 伏明之紀，是謂勝長。長氣不宣，藏氣反布，收氣自政，化令乃衡. The growing qi is not spread, the storing qi is out of its time, the harvesting qi governs of itself, and the command of transformation comes out level — four clauses that each say the same thing from a different quarter, that fire is not doing fire's work. Then what is seen: 寒清數舉，暑令乃薄，承化物生，生而不長，成實而稚，遇化已老，陽氣屈伏，蟄蟲早藏 — cold and clear weather comes up again and again, the summer's command is thin, things are born but do not grow, they come to fruit while still young and are old the moment the transformation touches them, the yang qi bends and lies down, and the hibernating creatures go into hiding early. Its 從 is water, 從水化也; its harm falls on the heart, and its 眚 on the south. 升明 is fire rising; 伏明 is the same fire with nothing to rise on.
shàng gǔ
High antiquity: the age the whole of Suwen 1 measures the present against, and the first word of its title. The chapter uses it four times — the people of high antiquity who knew the way; the sages of high antiquity who taught those below them; the true persons of high antiquity who took hold of heaven and earth; and, at the very end, the worthy who follow the high antiquity that went before. It is not a date but a direction: what the chapter asks is what has been lost, and the answer is that nothing has been taken away.
hòu
The smallest unit in the chapter's calendar, and the one that shows why the calendar is medical at all. Five days make a 候, three 候 make a 氣, six 氣 make a season, four seasons make a year — and the clause that matters is the last: 而各從其主治焉, each period has a qi that governs it. The same word is then used for the physician's watching: 謹候其時, watch carefully for its season.
shèn jì wǔ fēn
How far out a year may be. The passage asks what happens when the qi above and the qi below do not match: 天氣不足，地氣隨之；地氣不足，天氣從之 — and then says how much of the difference will be visible. 大要曰：甚紀五分，微紀七分，其差可見. Read with the sentence before it (故上勝則天氣降而下，下勝則地氣遷而上，多少而差其分，微者小差，甚者大差，甚則位易氣交，易則大變生而病作矣), the figure is a threshold: the discrepancy is always there, and only when it grows does it turn into disease. It is the chapter's last word on degree, and the only place in it where a difference is given a number.
fā chén
The name Suwen 2 gives to the three months of spring, and the first of the four season names that structure the chapter. What the winter stored, the spring sends out. The rule the chapter draws from it is the rule for spring: sleep at night and rise early, walk in the courtyard, let the hair down and slacken the body, let things live and do not kill them — and if you do not, the liver is harmed and summer brings a cold change.