Word.ws English Dictionary

gherao

/ɡɛˈɹaʊ/

gherao noun: a protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.

Noun

gherao (plural gheraos or gheraoes)

  1. (India) A protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.
    • They had done a gherao and trapped the manager in his office for a whole day.2002, Bharti Kirchner, Darjeeling, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 26
    • This was an invitation to strike: according to one estimate, there were more than 1,200 gheraos in the first six months of the first UF-LF government.2007, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 425

Verb

gherao (third-person singular simple present gheraos, present participle gheraoing, simple past and past participle gheraoed)

  1. (India, transitive) To surround for this purpose.
    • One day the city magistrate asked the army for help to curb a protest march by women Congress workers who had threatened to gherao the officials in the divisional office.1996, Kavery Nambisan, The Scent of Pepper, Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 215
    • In reply, the cultivators, apparently now protesting under the banner of the BKU gheraoed the power station.2006, Shakuntala Devi, Employment of Labour and Rural Development, Sarup & Sons, →ISBN, page 53

gherao meaning in Hindi

gherao in Hindi

gherao
घेराव gherāv

Forms of gherao

Noun
pluralgheraos
pluralgheraoes
Verb
third-person singular presentgheraos
present participlegheraoing
past participlegheraoed
pastgheraoed

Origin of gherao

From Hindi घेराव (gherāv, “encirclement”).

Questions about gherao

What does gherao mean?
Gherao means a protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.
What is gherao in Hindi?
Gherao in Hindi is घेराव (gherāv). See Gherao meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is gherao?
Gherao can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gherao?
Gherao is pronounced /ɡɛˈɹaʊ/.
What is the plural of gherao?
The plural of gherao is gheraos.

Words near gherao in the dictionary

  1. Ghentish
  2. Gheorghe Doja
  3. Gheorgheni
  4. Ghera
  5. Gherang
  6. gherao
  7. gheraoed
  8. gheraoes
  9. gheraoing
  10. gheraos
  11. Ghercești

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gherao (page history and authors); घेराव (Hindi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gherao.wav.

Cite this entry: “gherao.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gherao. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.