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ma·roon 1 (mə-rn)
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tr.v. ma·rooned, ma·roon·ing, ma·roons
1. To put ashore on a deserted island or coast and intentionally abandon.
2. To abandon or isolate with little hope of ready rescue or escape: The travelers were marooned by the blizzard.
n.
1. often Maroon
a. A fugitive black slave in the West Indies in the 1600s and 1700s.
b. A descendant of such a slave.
2. A person who is marooned, as on an island.

[From French marron, fugitive slave, from American Spanish cimarrón, wild, runaway, perhaps from cima, summit (from runaways' fleeing to the mountains), from Latin cȳma, sprout; see CYMA.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 
ma·roon 2 (mə-rn)
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n.
A dark reddish brown to dark purplish red.

[From Early Modern English, a kind of large sweet chestnut, from Middle French marron, from Italian marrone, from Old Italian, from a Romance root *marr-, rock, possibly of pre-Roman substrate origin (for the semantic development, compare Spanish berrueco, rocky reef, and Spanish dialectal (Cantabrian Mountains) berrueca, large chestnut).]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.