- pronunciation:
- m
run
- parts of speech:
- transitive verb, noun
- features:
- Word Combinations (verb, noun), Word History
| part of speech: |
transitive verb |
| inflections: |
maroons, marooning, marooned |
| definition 1: |
to put and leave (someone) ashore on an island or remote coast.
- synonyms:
- strand
- similar words:
- abandon, jettison, seclude
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| definition 2: |
to leave (someone) isolated with little prospect of help or rescue.
- synonyms:
- abandon, desert, forsake, strand
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| related words: |
forsake |
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| part of speech: |
noun |
| definition: |
any of a group of West Indians who are descended from fugitive African slaves of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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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."