Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A river of northern India and Bangladesh rising in the Himalaya Mountains and flowing about 2,510 km (1,560 mi) generally eastward through a vast plain to the Bay of Bengal. The river is sacred to Hindus.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A sacred river of India and Bangladesh

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an Asian river; rises in the Himalayas and flows east into the Bay of Bengal; a sacred river of the Hindus

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Sanskrit गङ्गा (gáṅgā), literally meaning "swift-goer", from verbal root √gam ("to go").

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Examples

  • How is it that one of the names of the Ganges is Welsh; for what is the difference between Dhur, a name of that river, and dwr, the common Welsh word for water?

    Wild Wales : Its People, Language and Scenery 2004

  • I think of Egypt where, for the first time in its history, a recorded history that goes back nearly ten thousand years, the fellah, the peasant of the Nile, like the ryot on the Ganges, is able to gather in the fruit of his own labours.

    The Relation of the United States to the Issues of the War 1916

  • To the south of the Ganges was the enormous mass of the Indian peninsula stretching out into the ocean, with the fabled island of Taprobane Ceylon or Sri Lanka just off the southeastern coast.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

  • To the south of the Ganges was the enormous mass of the Indian peninsula stretching out into the ocean, with the fabled island of Taprobane Ceylon or Sri Lanka just off the southeastern coast.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

  • To the south of the Ganges was the enormous mass of the Indian peninsula stretching out into the ocean, with the fabled island of Taprobane Ceylon or Sri Lanka just off the southeastern coast.

    Alexander the Great Philip Freeman 2011

  • Indian spiritual leader Swami Nigamanand died this week at the age of 36, after more than two months of public fasting against pollution of India's revered Ganga river, also known as the Ganges.

    Indian Swami's Death Draws Scant Attention 2011

  • Indian spiritual leader Swami Nigamanand died this week at the age of 36, after more than two months of public fasting against pollution of India's revered Ganga river, also known as the Ganges.

    Indian Swami's Death Draws Scant Attention 2011

  • Indian spiritual leader Swami Nigamanand died this week at the age of 36, after more than two months of public fasting against pollution of India's revered Ganga river, also known as the Ganges.

    Indian Swami's Death Draws Scant Attention 2011

  • Indian spiritual leader Swami Nigamanand died this week at the age of 36, after more than two months of public fasting against pollution of India's revered Ganga river, also known as the Ganges.

    Indian Swami's Death Draws Scant Attention 2011

  • All the plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people.

    The Door in the Wall, and other stories Herbert George 2006

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