Literary or formal term for a dead body; often used in poetic or dramatic contexts. In modern everyday speech, 死体 or 遺体 are more common.
Many corpses lay on the battlefield.
He lay motionless like a dead body.
Also a literary or archaic term for a corpse, often with a more graphic or grim nuance.
Standard kanji spelling; high-frequency news ranking.
Rare variant; more commonly read がい or しかばね.
Kana spelling is common in everyday writing, especially when the kanji is considered difficult or obscure.
Rare variant; usually read み or しん.
The historical derivation is uncertain. The kanji 躯 is conventionally associated with the meaning 'body' or 'torso'.