ko-i (Chin, ‘matching meanings’). A way of coining a necessary technical vocabulary in Chinese for Buddhist texts and translations. This technique, which involved looking for terms within pre-existing Chinese religious thought (primarily Taoist), as opposed to using Chinese characters strictly for their sound value as a way of representing Sanskrit words, carried with it the danger that readers unfamiliar with the Sanskrit originals would read the words in their ordinary native meaning, thus distorting the Chinese understanding of the texts.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)