Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A broad flight of steps leading down to the bank of a river in India, used especially by bathers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In India, a pass of descent from a mountain; a mountain-pass; hence, a range or chain of hills or mountains.
- noun In India, a path of descent, landing-place, or stairway to a river, generally having at the summit a temple, pagoda, or place of rest and recreation.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun India A pass through a mountain.
- noun A range of mountains.
- noun India Stairs descending to a river; a landing place; a wharf.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun India A descending path or stairway to a river; a
ford or landing-place. - noun India A
mountain range . - noun India A mountain
pass . - noun India A
burning-ghat .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun stairway in India leading down to a landing on the water
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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-- Marched ten miles: the road from the camp extended up an acclivity, the ground becoming more broken than usual to the mouth of the ghat, which is four miles distant; thence up to the ghat which resembles much the Bolan Pass, it extends up an inclined plane over a shingly road.
Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries William Griffith
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Marched down to the ghat, which is generally speaking narrow and very strong, opening out here and there, into easier parts extending down the stream all the way; this stream loses itself suddenly, but after a little distance it is replaced by another from the right, where ravines enter: here the pass is well adapted for pillage, elsewhere the sides are so steep, that robbers could not dispose of their plunder.
Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries William Griffith
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India's frontier and "the snows," is the ghat (a ghat is a large stone stairway descending to the river), where the good Hindu gives his dead to the flames, and the muddy inlet from the Ganges where this occurs is dedicated to Vishnu, "the sleeper on the waters," a name singularly appropriate to a place where the ashes of the dead are consigned to the bosom of "Mother Ganga."
East of Suez Ceylon, India, China and Japan Frederic Courtland Penfield 1888
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This word ghat often meets the reader of books on India.
Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 James Kennedy 1857
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The ghat is the exact location where the river is said to leave the Himalayan mountains and start its long journey across the plains of northern India before flowing into the Bay of Bengal.
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The ghat is a 15-minute walk from the temple complex.
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The "ghat" (bathing steps) in the centre of Haridwar where the naga sadhus will bathe is the central focus of the festival, attracting vast numbers of devotees who strip to their underclothes before entering the water.
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A portion of the retaining wall on the first 'ghat' at Kerameri caved in and fell on the second turning about a month ago.
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It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion at around 6:30pm 1300 GMT at a ritual bathing "ghat" on the banks of the Ganges river, which is holy to Hindus, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
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The "ghat" (bathing steps) in the centre of Haridwar where the naga sadhus will bathe is the central focus of the festival, attracting vast numbers of devotees who strip to their underclothes before entering the water.
chained_bear commented on the word ghat
"Normally corpses there were cremated in burning ghats, level spaces at the top of the stepped riverbank, and the ashes given to the river. The supply of firewood was quickly exhausted, making cremation impossible...."
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 365
February 17, 2009