But iceberg brings to my attention how inadequate the above etymology is:

maroon (muh-ROON) tr.verb

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.

maroon noun

1. Often Maroon.

a. A fugitive Black slave in the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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 cimarron, wild, runaway, perhaps from cima, summit, from Latin cyma, sprout.]

WORD HISTORY: The history of the word maroon, which we associate with desert islands, takes us back to the days of slavery, when the noun maroon was a term in English for a Black person who lived in the mountains and forests of Dutch Guiana (Suriname) and the West Indies, a term that is still used in parts of the Caribbean. These were plantation slaves who had run away to live free in uncultivated parts. The English word is taken from the French word marron, “runaway Black slave,” which in turn was an alteration of American Spanish cimarron, meaning “runaway slave.” Cimarron is perhaps from cima, “summit.” Having come into English (first recorded in 1666), maroon took on a life of its own and came to be used as a verb meaning “to be lost in the wilds,” from which our sense “to put ashore on a deserted island or coast” evolved.

maroon noun

Color. A dark reddish brown to dark purplish red.

[French marron, chestnut, from Italian marrone.]

“Marooned on a bucolic island without any other culture, their personal and professional lives become almost indistinguishable.” Klein, Jeffrey, Billing us softly. Mother Jones, 11 Jan 1998.

This week’s theme: words with interesting histories.

Source: wordsmith.org/awad/archives/0498