Ki

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The vital life force believed to flow through all living things, central to Japanese martial arts and traditional medicine
2. A subtle energy thought to animate the body and mind, cultivated through breath and discipline in East Asian practices
3. The essential life energy that practitioners of Japanese martial arts and meditation seek to channel and balance within themselves

Etymology: Written "ki" in older English texts, this term renders the Chinese character 氣, pronounced "qì" in modern Mandarin. The character originally meant breath, steam or vapour, and later came to denote the vital force believed to animate the body and the cosmos. The "ki" spelling comes from dated romanizations that did not distinguish the k and q sounds, which is why older writing uses it while modern transcriptions use "qi." The same syllable also reached English through Japanese, where the character is read "ki" (気). Japan took the concept from Chinese, so the two spellings look different only because they entered the language by separate routes, yet both trace back to the same Chinese origin.