wǔ yí
Also rendered: The five suitabilities (this site; 宜 is what is fitting, and the five are the fits between a creature and the year it is born into) · The five befittings (literal; older in feel, and it says the same thing with more weight than the chapter's 宜 carries)
Reviewed · 2026-10-13
At a glance
The fifth of the five divisions of 生化, and the one that makes the year’s qi into a rule for living. The sentence that names it runs: 根于外者亦五，故生化之别，有五氣、五味、五色、五類、五宜也 — what is rooted outside falls into five, so the differences of generation and transformation come out as five qi, five flavours, five colours, five classes and five suitabilities. The chapter has already used the word before this, in the paragraph on the classes: 五類衰盛，各隨其氣之所宜也 — each of the five classes flourishes or declines according to what its own qi is suited to. So 五宜 is the same judgement seen from the creature’s side: not what the year does, but what the year suits, and therefore what may be preserved, carried to term or treated. It is the last term of the chapter’s apparatus and the quietest: 宜 is not a cause, only a fit.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | the five suitabilities | what the year suits, taken five ways; the rendering keeps 宜 a fit rather than a rule |
| Transliteration | wu yi | right about the referent, and it explains nothing about fitting |
| Descriptive | the five things the year is fit for | exact about the creature's side, and it drops the parallel with 五氣、五味、五色、五類 |
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