The court needed to confirm the defendant's true identity.
Tips
usage
Most often heard in the fixed phrase 验明正身 (yànmíng zhèngshēn) — to verify that someone is truly the person they claim to be. Common in police, legal, and historical contexts.
history
The classical sense (君子正身以俟 'a gentleman rectifies himself and waits') means moral self-correction, but in modern Chinese the identity-verification meaning dominates.
