ghat

plural ghats · alternative ghât · alternative ghát · alternative ghaut

1. IndiaA descending path or stairway to a river; a ford or landing-place.

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

   1855, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Flora Indica

   1 more example

   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.

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

2. IndiaA burning-ghat.

   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.

   2023 November 30, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, “Inside India’s Gargantuan Mission to Clean the Ganges River”, in Wired, →ISSN

3. IndiaA mountain pass.
4. IndiaA mountain range.

   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

   1885, Edward Balfour, Cyclopaedia of India

5. CaribbeanalternativeAlternative form of ghut (“ravine leading to the sea”).