Maroon¹ and maroon² are homographs; they are spelled the same but have different meanings and different origins. Maroon¹ comes from a French word that means "a chestnut" (a deep red-brown nut). Maroon² comes from an early Spanish word that meant "a mountain-top." Five hundred years ago, in the West Indies, a "maroon" was an escaped slave who had fled to the mountains to escape Spanish rulers. The word "maroon" later came to mean "to abandon someone in a wild and isolated place."