dú shǐ
Also rendered: The solitary messenger (clear, and it makes the office sound occasional) · The single envoy (exact, and it loses 獨's sense of having no counterpart)
Reviewed · 2026-10-18
At a glance
The last of the six names in the chapter’s second answer. The six are given places in a household: 三陽爲父，二陽爲衛，一陽爲紀；三陰爲母，二陰爲雌，一陰爲獨使. Father, mother, guard, female, order — each of these is a relation, and a relation needs two terms. The lone envoy is the exception: an office held alone, a commission carried out without a partner. The one yin is the last of the yin, the channel the chapter elsewhere calls 厥陰, and what it carries is the office of bringing the yin to its end and handing it over — which is why the answer that follows begins with 二陽一陰 and ends with 一陰一陽代絕. The phrase is a small piece of political imagery inside a medical argument, and it does real work: it says that the one yin is not weaker than the others but differently placed.
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 lone envoy | the one yin, which holds its office without a partner |
| Literal | alone-envoy | exact, and it is not English |
| Explanatory | the unpaired office | clear, and the image of the envoy is gone |
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