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.
lǒng qǐ
To swell up in a ridge. Chapter 27 uses the image three times: the river heaves into ridges when a sudden wind rises, the arrival of the pulse also swells at times, and — the decisive case — when true qi and evil have merged the wave-swell no longer rises. That last use is why the word matters. The swell is the only thing that can be watched; when it stops there is nothing left to wait for, and the physician has to change method entirely, from meeting the evil to regulating by what is full and empty among the three regions and nine indicators.
yē yē
The smothering heat of a malaria fit — heat of the sun-and-sultry kind rather than the flaming kind. The chapter pairs it with 熇熇 so that the two words between them cover the whole feel of the fever: blazing outward, stifling inward. It occurs once in the Suwen, here.
jié cì
A piercing that is not retained. In the sinew chapter it always follows the heated needle and always carries the same measure: 以知爲數，以痛爲輸 — stop when the patient feels the thing, and take the painful spot as the point. The name distinguishes it from the retained needling of the channel chapter, where depth and the count of breaths are what matter; here speed is the technique.
tài chōng
In the sixth chapter, the name for what lies behind the sage as he faces south, and the region in which lesser yin runs. This is a region of the body, not the great surge vessel of the first chapter: the two share a name and an image, but the sixth chapter is not talking about a vessel.
tài xī
The pulse behind the inner ankle where the kidney channel's qi issues, and the pulse this chapter takes when the earth circuit is in surplus: 歲土太過，雨濕流行，腎水受邪 — earth in surplus strikes the water of the kidney — and so it is 太谿, the kidney's pulse, whose stopping means death. The name is the hollow it is taken in. The chapter's own spelling is 谿, the graph it uses for a ravine throughout; the same word is often written 溪, and the two are one name, not two places.
tài yáng
The first of the three yang. In the sixth chapter it is the channel that lies above lesser yin, whose root is Zhiyin on the small toe and whose knot is the gate of life — Wang Bing takes the gate of life to be the two eyes. Its office is the open: the outermost of the three, turned toward the surface.
tài yīn
The first of the three yin. It lies below broad brightness, is named where the surge lies lowest, roots at Yinbai on the inner side of the great toe, and holds the office of the open — the outermost of the three yin.
tài yuān
The pulse at the wrist where the lung channel's qi gathers, and the pulse this chapter takes when the fire circuit is in surplus: 歲火太過，炎暑流行，金肺受邪 — fire in surplus strikes the metal of the lung — and so it is 太淵, the lung's pulse, whose stopping means death. The name is the place: a pool where water turns round upon itself, which is what a pulse feels like under the finger at that hollow. The chapter gives no anatomy; it names the pulse and gives its verdict, and the reader who knows which channel each pulse belongs to can reconstruct the rule.
fǎ tiān zé dì
Chapter 25's description of practice at its highest: not applying a technique but answering a situation, so that the response comes like an echo and follows like a shadow. The phrase is set directly against the competence of the common workmen, who know only that the empty should be filled and the full drained. The clause that closes the sentence is the one readers remember: 道無鬼神 — there are no ghosts or spirits in the way. It is the book's clearest refusal to explain a good outcome by anything other than the physician's own responsiveness.
shí quán
Ten in ten is what the books promise and what every student is taught to say. Lei Gong puts it in the mouth of his teachers — 循經受業，皆言十全 — and immediately admits that in practice there are failures, and asks to hear how they are to be explained. The emperor does not deny the ideal; he asks 所以不十全者, what it is that keeps ten from being ten, and answers with four failures, none of which is ignorance of the channels. The phrase thus does the work of a standard: because ten in ten is claimed, every failure must be accounted for, and the four accounts are the chapter. It is worth noticing that the chapter never says the standard is false — only that it is claimed before it is earned.
chì
The last stage of the disease that entered as wind-cold. When the kidney transmits to the heart, the sinews and vessels pull against one another and tighten, and this is named 瘛. It is the point at which only cautery and medicine remain, and after ten full days death is due by rule. The word is close in form to the 瘈 of 瘈瘲 in chapter sixteen, and the two are often confused; this chapter writes 瘛, and the base text is followed here.
jié hóu
The laryngeal prominence, taken as the top of the trunk's vertical scale. The chapter measures downward from it: four cun to the middle of the supraclavicular fossa, nine more to the sword bone, eight more to the heavenly pivot, six and a half more to the pubic bone. Every later figure depends on where this first point is taken, which is why the commentators argue about whether the measure starts at the knot itself or at its lower edge.