maroon
pronunciation
How to pronounce maroon in British English:
UK [məˈru:n]
How to pronounce maroon in American English:
US [məˈrun]
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- Noun:
- a person who is stranded (as on an island)
- a dark purplish red to dark brownish red
- an exploding firework used as a warning signal
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- Verb:
- leave stranded or isolated withe little hope og rescue
- leave stranded on a desert island without resources
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- Adjective:
- dark brownish to purplish red
Word Origin
- maroon
- maroon: English has two distinct and completely unrelated words maroon. The one denoting ‘brownish red’ and ‘firework’ [16] has had a chequered semantic history, as its present-day diversity of meanings suggests. It comes ultimately from medieval Greek máraon ‘sweet chestnut’, and reached English via Italian marrone and French marron (as in marrons glacés).It was originally used for ‘chestnut’ in English too, but that sense died out in the early 18th century, leaving behind the colour term (an allusion to the reddish brown of the chestnut’s inner shell) and ‘firework, exploding projectile’ (perhaps a reference to the shape of such devices). Maroon ‘abandon’ [17] comes from the noun maroon. This originally meant ‘runaway slave’, and comes via French from American Spanish cimarron.The most widely accepted derivation of this is that it was based on Spanish cima ‘summit’, a descendant of Latin cyma ‘sprout’, and that it thus denotes etymologically ‘one who lives on the mountain tops’.
- maroon (n.)
- "very dark reddish-brown color," 1791, from French couleur marron, the color of a marron "chestnut," the large sweet chestnut of southern Europe (maroon in that sense was used in English from 1590s), from dialect of Lyons, ultimately from a word in a pre-Roman language, perhaps Ligurian; or from Greek maraon "sweet chestnut."
- maroon (v.)
- "put ashore on a desolate island or coast," 1724 (implied in marooning), earlier "to be lost in the wild" (1690s); from maron (n.) "fugitive black slave in the jungles of W.Indies and Dutch Guyana" (1660s), earlier symeron (1620s), from French marron, said to be a corruption of Spanish cimmaron "wild, untamed," from Old Spanish cimarra "thicket," probably from cima "summit, top" (from Latin cyma "sprout"), with a notion of living wild in the mountains. Related: Marooned.
Example
- 1. Fast forward a heat map of the world , colour-coded for temperature change , shows the arctic in sizzling maroon .
- 2. I flip on the lights and the reading room springs into being ; heavy wooden tables and chairs , maroon carpet , forbidding enormous reference desk .
- 3. He enjoyed his celebrity time : the fur coats and the diamond rings , the maroon cadillac limousine in which her billy boy swept back into beaufort to buy a 368-acre plantation for his mamma .
- 4. He kept his coins at home in a drawer , sometimes adding to the $ 20 his father had given him when he turned six , all recorded in a little maroon passbook - his first bank account .