gherao
/ɡɛˈɹaʊ/noun, verb
gherao is a noun meaning “A protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled G-H-E-R-A-O, and it appears about once in every 91 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of gherao is gheraos or gheraoes.
What does gherao mean?
noun
- 1
IndiaA protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.
verb
- 1
IndiaTo surround for this purpose.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce gherao?
- /ɡɛˈɹaʊ/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-gherao.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of gherao
- gheraos plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- gheraoes plural
- gheraoing participle, present
- gheraoed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is gherao?
Gherao appears about once in every 91 million words in written English, the 305,310th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does gherao come from?
From Hindi घेराव (gherāv, “encirclement”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).