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.
shèng fù
Prevalence and the answering return — the pair by which a qi that has overstepped is met by the qi that answers it. The chapter raises it only to say what cannot be done with it: 天地之氣，勝復之作，不形於診也, the arising of prevalence and revenge in the qi of heaven and earth does not take shape in the pulse. The Pulse Method is quoted to the same effect. It is the one place in the Suwen where the doctrine of the circuits is told plainly that it is not a matter for the wrist.
qì
Qi is what the texts call the activity of a thing rather than the thing itself — the breath, warmth and movement by which a system does its work. This site leaves it untranslated, because every English substitute (energy, force, vital power) implies a physics the texts never assume.
rì chéng sì jì
The last and strangest of the chapter's death-hours. The chapter assigns an hour to each kind of pulse: the cold-heat disease dies at dawn, heat in the centre and heat disease at midday, wind disease at dusk, water disease at midnight. But the pulse that is 乍疏乍數、乍遲乍疾 — scattered, then rapid, slow, then swift, never settling — gets no hour at all; it dies on a day that rides the four quarters of the year. The phrase is usually taken as the four turning-points, the eighteen days at the end of each season when one quarter is handing over to the next, and the reading fits: a pulse with no fixed rate is given a time with no fixed season.
shēng míng
Fire in its even state. 火曰升明 — fire is called rising brightness — and its 紀 runs: 升明之紀，正陽而治，德施周普，五化均衡，其氣高，其性速，其用燔灼，其化蕃茂，其類火，其政明曜，其候炎暑，其令熱，其藏心，心其畏寒，其主舌，其榖麥，其果杏，其實絡，其應夏，其蟲羽，其畜馬，其色赤，其養血，其病瞤瘛，其味苦，其音徵，其物脉，其數七. Two words carry the judgement: 正陽 and 周普 — the upright yang, and a virtue given out on every side. Fire even is not fire damped; it is fire governing by its rightness rather than by its force, and its five transformations come out 均衡, even in measure, where wood's spread and levelled. Its viscus is the heart, its creature the feathered, its number seven; when it fails it does so as 伏明, brightness hidden, and when it goes too far as 赫曦, blazing sunlight.
tóng zhèng
The table's way of saying that a year's musical note is the upright one for its element, so that no separate name is needed: 太陽、太徴、太陰、戊辰、戊戌同正徴. The four kinds of it are written over twelve rows of the table, one to five times each — 同正徴一、同正宫三、同正角三、同正商五 —and the construction has one outside extension, 諸同正歲 in the passage on jueyin governing the heaven, where it marks a year in which every one of the six qi agrees with the season it enters, so that 氣化運行同天 and there is nothing for the year's own qi to do. Both uses turn on the same idea: 同正 is agreement, and agreement is the absence of a difference worth naming.
zhèn xīng
The planet Saturn, the star of earth and of the centre, and the one this chapter names whenever the earth circuit moves or the water circuit fails. Its name is what earth does: to press down and settle, holding the other four to their seasons. Earth in surplus answers to it (歲土太過…上應鎮星), and so does water falling short, because when water is short it is damp that rises (歲水不及，濕乃大行…上應鎮星); and it comes back a third time for the flood that follows (大雨至，埃霧朦鬱，上應鎮星).
róng píng
The name Suwen 2 gives to the three months of autumn. Growth has stopped; things stand at their measure. The rule drawn from it is the rule for autumn: sleep early and rise early, get up with the cockerel, calm the will so as to soften the flaying of autumn, gather the spirit and the qi in, and let the lung qi be pure. Breaking it harms the lung, and winter brings food-diarrhoea.
bì cáng
The name Suwen 2 gives to the three months of winter, and the last of the four season names. The door is shut and what was gathered is put away. The rule drawn from it is the rule for winter: sleep early and rise late, wait for the sun, hide the will away as though you had something to keep, leave the cold for the warm, and let nothing out through the skin. Breaking it harms the kidney, and spring brings flaccidity and inversion.
jūn huǒ
The first of the two fires in 君火以明，相火以位. The chapter needs six qi for five phases, and fire is the one that is doubled: 木火土金水火 is the list it gives for earth, with fire appearing at both ends. Of the doubled pair, the sovereign fire is the one that rules by being bright rather than by acting — 以明 — while the minister fire 以位, by holding its station. The chapter itself puts the minister fire on 少陽 (少陽之上，相火主之) and gives lesser yin heat (少陰之上，熱氣主之), which is why later writing on the circuit qi assigns 君火 to 少陰 and 相火 to 少陽.
liú yǎn
Water going to excess. 水曰流衍 — water is called spreading flow — and its 紀 is 封藏: 流衍之紀，是謂封藏。寒司物化，天地嚴凝，藏政以布，長令不揚. Cold has charge of the world's transformations, heaven and earth close hard, the governance of storing is spread abroad, and the command of growing is not raised — the excess of water is told as a year that never opens. Its attributes: 其化凜，其氣堅，其政謐，其令流注，其動漂泄沃涌，其德凝慘寒雰，其變冰雪霜雹…其象冬，其經足少陰太陽，其藏腎心…其病脹. Its viscera are the kidney and the heart — the water and the fire it puts out — and its illness is fullness, the swelling of a body with nothing moving in it. The chapter closes the group with it, and the closing passage adds 政過則化氣大舉，而埃昏氣交，大雨時降，邪傷腎也: the excess at last breaks, and the harm falls on the kidney.
fū hé
Wood in its even state, and the first of the five even circuits. 木曰敷和 — wood is called spreading harmony — and the chapter then gives the whole of its 紀: 敷和之紀，木德周行，陽舒陰布，五化宣平，其氣端，其性隨，其用曲直，其化生榮，其類草木，其政發散，其候温和，其令風，其藏肝…其榖麻，其果李，其實核，其應春，其蟲毛，其畜犬，其色蒼，其養筋，其病裏急支滿，其味酸，其音角，其物中堅，其數八. The shape is the same in all five paragraphs — the circuit's name and its phase, then its qi, nature, use, transformation, class, governance, season, command, viscus, grain, fruit, the flesh of the fruit, the season it answers, its creature, its domestic animal, its colour, what it nourishes, what it falls ill with, its flavour, its note, its substance and its number — and 敷和 is the standard against which wood's two failures are read: 委和 when it falls short and 發生 when it goes to excess. Its number is eight, the number of wood.
jìng shùn
Water in its even state. 水曰靜順 — water is called still compliance — and its 紀 runs: 靜順之紀，藏而勿害，治而善下，五化咸整，其氣明，其性下，其用沃衍，其化凝堅，其類水，其政流演，其候凝肅，其令寒，其藏腎，腎其畏濕，其主二陰，其榖豆，其果栗，其實濡，其應冬，其蟲鱗，其畜彘，其色黑，其養骨髓，其病厥，其味鹹，其音羽，其物濡，其數六. Its two opening pairs are a manner and a policy: 藏而勿害, it stores and does no harm, and 治而善下, it governs and is good at keeping low. Neither is a restraint on water; both are what water even is, and the chapter's five transformations come out 咸整, all of them ordered, the last word any of the five paragraphs uses. Water is also the phase the chapter ends on, and the one whose even state the closing sentence of the group gathers up: 故生而勿殺，長而勿罰，化而勿制，收而勿害，藏而勿抑，是謂平氣 — the five 勿 of that sentence are the five even circuits read one by one. Its viscus is the kidney, its number six; failing it is 涸流, the dried stream, and in excess 流衍, spreading flow.