ghat

• ghât
• (a ravine leading to the sea): ghaut

From Hindi घाट (ghāṭ, “pier”), from Sanskrit घट्ट (ghaṭṭa, “a landing-place, steps on the side of a river leading to the waters”). Perhaps related to Telugu గట్టు (gaṭṭu, “dam, embankment”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɡɔːt/, /ɡɑːt/
• Rhymes: -ɔːt

ghat (plural ghats)

1. (India) A descending path or stairway to a river; a ford or landing-place.
   • 1855, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Flora Indica:

     The abrupt escarpment of the western Ghats condenses so much of the moisture of the south-west monsoon

   • 2008, Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger, Atlantic, published 2009, page 16:

     Chunks of wood were being built into funeral pyres on the steps of the ghat that went down into the water; four bodies were burning on the ghat steps when we got there.

2. (India) A mountain range.
   • 1885, Edward Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India:

     And farther south, in the interior of the Peninsula, in the elevated tract from 1200 to 2400 feet above the sea, between the Eastern and Western Ghats

3. (India) A mountain pass.
4. (Caribbean) A steep ravine leading to the sea.
5. (India) A burning-ghat.
   • 2023 November 30, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, “Inside India’s Gargantuan Mission to Clean the Ganges River”, in Wired‎, →ISSN:

     On the steps of the Manikarnika ghat—the holiest of the city’s stepped riverbanks, upon which Hindu dead are cremated—the fires are already lit, and mourners assemble by the hundred to accompany their loved ones at the end.

• GTHA