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.
yuè guō
The moon's visible circumference, treated in chapter 26 as the clock that the blood keeps. When the rim is full, blood and qi are replete and the flesh firm; when it is empty, flesh wastes, the channels empty, the defence qi leaves and the form is left alone. The clinical rule follows directly: do not supplement at the full moon and do not treat at all when the rim is empty. The chapter's physiology of the calendar rests entirely on this word being about the rim rather than the moon as an object.
jiǔ yě
The nine-fold division of space that gives the nine probes their number. The arithmetic runs outward from heaven to earth to the human and triples to nine, 以應九野 — to answer to the nine regions; and the chapter then runs it inward again, 九分爲九野，九野爲九藏 — divided into nine regions, the nine regions become nine stores. It is the same move the chapter makes with everything: a number from the sky is applied to the landscape, and the landscape is then read back onto the body. The regions themselves are not described here; what the chapter wants is the correspondence, and the licence it gives to divide a body nine ways.
běi zhèng
The other of the two ways a year may stand: it faces north and takes its qi rather than issuing it. The pulse is stated first for this one — 北政之歲，少陰在泉，則寸口不應；厥陰在泉，則右不應；太陰在泉，則左不應 — and the rule is then repeated by position: 北政之歲，三陰在下，則寸不應；三陰在上，則尺不應. The two administrations are exact mirrors: what 南政 answers with its inch when the three yin are above, 北政 answers with its cubit, and the other way round. The chapter draws no conclusion beyond this and the sentence that closes it — 知其要者，一言而終，不知其要，流散無窮 — and which years are northern is left, in the base text, to the reckoning of the year.
tiān shù
The number or measure heaven apportions — the chapter's word for the bound set on a life, as distinct from what a person does with it. Huang Di asks whether an old man without children has spent his material strength or whether it is simply the number of heaven; the answer is a count by sevens and eights, which treats the two as one question. The same measure reappears at the close of the counts, where even those whose span exceeds its measure still may not pass the bound.
qì shù
One half of the pair this chapter sets up against itself: 天度 governs the course of sun and moon, 氣數 records the work of generation and transformation. One warning for the reader: in ordinary Chinese 氣數 came to mean allotment, destiny, the number of one's days. Here it means nothing of the kind — it is a calendar term, the count of the qi that come round in a year.
zhǔ qì
The qi that holds its place. At the end of the chapter, after the four prohibitions and the licence to offend against them when the weather has turned, comes the last question: 假者何如？ and the answer 有假其氣，則無禁也，所謂主氣不足，客氣勝也. The six 主氣 are the fixed seasonal qi — 厥陰風木、少陰君火、少陽相火、太陰濕土、陽明燥金、太陽寒水 — each in charge of two months; the 客氣 is the qi the year brings. When the visiting qi is stronger than the one in charge, the prohibitions of 四畏 can be set aside. The pair 主/客 is the chapter's final distinction, and it is the one that makes the whole sixty-year apparatus usable at the bedside.
dì qì
The qi of earth, the second half of the pair on which Suwen 2 runs its account of the seasons. In autumn it is clear; in the disordered picture the chapter draws, when the yang qi has been shut up, it is the qi of earth that throws a veil over the brightness — the earth rising where the sky should be.
tiān qì
The qi of heaven, as opposed to the qi of earth. Suwen 2 uses the pair twice over: in autumn the qi of heaven is sharp and the qi of earth is clear; and in the cosmology paragraph it is heaven's qi that is pure, still, bright and luminous and keeps its virtue stored away, with the consequence that when it fails, the white dew does not fall and the ten thousand things have nothing to be given from.
sī qì
The qi that has charge of the year itself, and the colour that year takes: 厥陰司氣爲蒼化、少陽爲丹化、陽明爲素化、太陽爲玄化、太陰爲黅化 — while 少陰 alone is given as 不司氣化. The chapter uses the word in two ways and holds them together. As a position it stands third in the list of four, between 在泉 and 間氣. As an office it is asked about directly: 帝曰：司氣者何如？歧伯曰：司氣者主歲同，然有餘不足也 — the qi that governs a year is the same qi as that year's 司歲之物, and what varies is only whether it comes in excess or in want. The 不司氣化 of 少陰 is what marks 君火 off from the other five: it takes no colour of its own.
dìng qī zhī jì
The name the chapter gives the table it has just finished. Thirty pairs of years have been given their upper, middle and lower qi, their transformations, their disaster palaces and their prescriptions; then comes 凡此定期之紀，勝復正化，皆有常數，不可不察，故知其要者，一言而終，不知其要，流散無窮. The claim is that the table is not a list of cases but a record with fixed periods, and that everything in it is number: 勝復 and 正化 alike can be counted in advance. It is the table's colophon, and it is what makes the phrase 六元正紀 a name for a book rather than a sentence.
liù qì zhèng jì
The name the chapter gives to its own closing passage. After the table of sixty years and the questions about 加臨 and 天符, 岐伯 says 夫六氣正紀，有化有變，有勝有復，有用有病，不同其候，帝欲何乎 — and then gives thirteen paragraphs of what each qi does on arrival. The phrase is the argument in miniature: the six qi have a regular record (有化有變), it can be stated in full (正紀), and it differs from case to case (不同其候). Everything in the chapter before it is the record for the years; this is the record for the qi themselves.
qī yào
The sun and moon with the five planets, and in this chapter the things that weave the emptiness while the five phases attach themselves to the earth. The line is a pair, and the pair is the chapter's model of how change works: 天垂象，地成形，七曜緯虚，五行麗地. What is above moves and gives images; what is below holds still and gives forms. The chapter then says why that matters — because form and essence are as root to branches, one may look up at the images and know what is far off.