顺遂 (shùn suì) — Smooth Passage · Carried Through to Done

遂 shows what it does most sharply when it is negated. 未遂 — not carried through — is the term Chinese law still uses for an attempt that got started and failed to complete: 遂 marks the point past which a thing is finished rather than in progress. The graph is built on 辵 (chuò), the walking radical that puts motion under a character. The Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 CE) gives its first gloss as 亡, to get away — a reading later philologists have argued with — while the senses 遂 actually carries in use are 达, to reach, and 成, to complete, along with the pair that matters most for a blessing: 遂愿 and 遂心, the wish that reaches its object. 遂 is the character for the last stretch. Not the setting out, but the getting there, and getting there onto the thing you wanted.

In this compound 顺 supplies the road. Its older forms set 川, a river current, beside 頁, a head turned to follow it, and the same dictionary defines it in a single word: 理, in accord with the way things run. The compound itself is much younger than either half, and the uses the dictionaries record first are Song-dynasty and causative, in a sense modern Chinese has dropped — Zeng Gong (曾巩, 1019–1083), drafting the decree that appoints a Minister of Rites, writes that ritual order 顺遂万物: it lets the ten thousand things each run their own course to completion.

What the word does now is smaller and more personal, but it kept the shape of that older sense: two demands rather than one. Chinese has a separate complaint ready for each of them failing. 白忙一场, busy for nothing — the stretch that met no obstacle and produced nothing. 得不偿失, the gain not covering the loss — the thing that arrived at a price that ruined it. The everyday word 顺利 answers only the first: 利 means benefit or sharpness, and it describes how the going feels. 遂 reports whether it finished, and whether what finished was what was wanted. 顺遂 asks for the road and the ending in one word.

• 功成事遂，百姓皆谓我自然。

  《道德经》第十七章 (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17, c. 400 BCE)
  The work is completed, the matter carried through, and the people all say: we did this ourselves. — Laozi's portrait of the best ruler, the one whose hand is never visible in the result. 事遂 is the exact 遂 of 顺遂: not the effort spent, but the moment the thing is finally done.

• 天地以顺动，故日月不过，而四时不忒。

  《周易·豫卦·彖传》(Book of Changes, Commentary on Hexagram 16: Yù, c. 300 BCE)
  Heaven and earth move by going with things, and so the sun and moon never overrun and the four seasons never err. — The line that keeps 顺 from meaning passivity. Going with the grain is what makes the movement exact: nothing overshoots, nothing arrives out of order.

• 万物各得其和以生，各得其养以成。

  《荀子·天论》(Xunzi, "Discourse on Heaven," c. 250 BCE)
  Each of the ten thousand things gets the balance it needs to be born, and the nourishment it needs to come to completion. — Xunzi is describing the natural order rather than anyone's plans, but he keeps 生 and 成 apart, and gives each its own conditions. That separation — starting and finishing are two different achievements — is the one 顺遂 also keeps.

顺遂 is a word people write and almost never say. Spoken Mandarin runs on 顺利 — 一切顺利 is what you tell a friend heading into an exam — while 顺遂 turns up in the written registers: the New Year message, the inscription in a graduate's book, the line added under a signature, nearly always inside a set phrase (万事顺遂, 诸事顺遂, 一生顺遂). It sounds slightly stiff said aloud, which is part of why it holds up in ink. Putting it in brushwork is not a formal translation of an everyday wish; it is already the form the wish takes when someone sits down to write it.

The word describes a road, never a person. A life can be 顺遂 (一生顺遂), and so can a career, a year, a journey — but there is no 顺遂的人 the way there is 善良的人. That boundary is what separates it from most of the blessing vocabulary. 德 and 仁 say what someone is; 福 and 禄 name something bestowed from outside; 顺遂 makes no claim about a person's worth and no promise about the size of the outcome, and reports only how things unfolded, and whether they unfolded onto what was wanted. It is the reason the word fits someone in the middle of an effort rather than at the end of one. It does not tell them they deserve to arrive. It wishes that the road stays open and that they do.