Abstract: The work Key Categories of Both the Court and Commonalty is a book of notes in style of dictionary. It has five volumes and twenty sections. And it has collected three hundred and thirty entries of words, including those of laws and regulations, stories concerning government and the public, and terms of conventions. This paper has made an attempt to make a probe into the vocabulary concerning imperial examinations. It has divided such vocabulary into two kinds: one concerning ranking and the other about conventions of the examinations. The former includes huangjia, sanyuan, danbang, and etc. The latter involves wenxiyan(banquet for the good news), quyan, chunyan, timing, qiji, tongnianxianghui, and etc.