- pronunciation:
- m
run
- features:
- Word History
| part of speech: |
verb |
| inflections: |
maroons, marooning, marooned |
| definition: |
to leave on an island or coast, far from other people; abandon.
The pirates marooned the children on a desert island.- synonyms:
- strand
- similar words:
- abandon, jettison
|
| related words: |
forsake |
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."