ghaut

English

See ghut, ghat, and gaut.

ghaut (plural ghauts)

(Caribbean) Alternative form of ghut (“ravine leading to the sea”).
- Runaway Ghaut in the Lonely Planet Guide
  Ghauts (pronounced guts) are steep ravines that send rainwater rushing down from the mountains into the sea. The most famous is Runaway Ghaut, on the side of the road just north of Salem. According to legend, those who drink from it will return to Montserrat time and again.
(India) Archaic form of ghat (“mountain pass; stairway descending to a river”).
- 1872, Church missionary intelligencer, volume 8, page 277:
  [Some] houses have special ghauts or flights of steps to the river, and for the rest public ghauts suffice.
- 1881, Arthur Frederick Cox, A Manual of the North Arcot District in the Presidency of Madras, page 262:
  In villages the people mostly occupy thatched dwellings with brick in mud or mud walls. Above the ghauts many houses are terraced with a tenaceous clay, in […]