Etymology: < Middle French, French marron chestnut (1526 in Middle French; compare marron n.¹) and its etymon Italian marrone (a1320; compare post-classical Latin marron- , marro (1176 in a document from Como)); further etymology uncertain. Medieval Greek μάραον cherry (one isolated 12th-cent. attestation) has been adduced as a possible etymon, but seems unconvincing. Perhaps (as suggested in Französisches etymol. Wörterbuch) from the same unattested Romance base *marr- stone, rock as merels n. (with the semantic shift compare Spanish berrueco rocky reef, Spanish regional berrueca a large kind of chestnut).French marron is attested in sense A. 2 from 1752; Trésor de la Langue Française explains that the firework makes the noise of a chestnut bursting in the fire. As the name of a colour (see sense A. 3) probably after similar use in French from the 18th cent. (a1786; 1750 in form maron ; 1736 as adjective; compare earlier couleur de maron (1706)). For later examples of the spelling marron in sense A. 1 (perhaps showing a secondary borrowing of French marron ) see marron n.¹

Etymology: < French marron (adjective) feral (1640 of a pig in Martinique), fugitive (1658 as nègre Maron in the passage translated in quot. 1666 at sense A. 1a; compare Cimaroni (1579) in a French translation of an Italian text), shortened < Spanish cimarrón fugitive (1535, with reference to South America), feral, probably < cima summit (1490; previously in the senses masthead (1330), branch of a tree (a1250); < classical Latin cȳma young shoots of a plant: see cyma n.) + -arrón, suffix forming nouns; compare Spanish cimarra wild place. Trésor de la langue française derives French marron from Spanish cimarrón via Carib maron , marron wild, though there does not seem to be evidence to support this. J. Corominas Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (1954) suggests that, in spite of the chronology of forms above, the loss of the initial syllable of the word may have occurred first in English, and subsequently been borrowed into French; Dict. Caribbean Eng. Usage (1996) also suggests borrowing into English immediately < Spanish. Spanish cimarrón occurs earlier in an English context in form Symeron denoting the members of a group of runaway slaves and American Indians in Panama who assisted Sir Francis Drake in raids on the Spanish in 1572 and later, and is subsequently applied (in various forms) to similar communities elsewhere. Compare:1584 R. Hakluyt Disc. Western Planting (1877) vii. 57 Sir Francis Drake and some other Englishe are of..greate credite with the Symerons.1626 P. Nichols Sir F. Drake Revived (1628) 7 The Symerons (a blacke people, which about eightie yeeres past, fled from the Spaniards their Masters). For a possible earlier example in sense A. 1a see quot. 1661 at marooner n. 1 and discussion at that entry.

Etymology: < maroon n.² With sense 2a compare slightly earlier marooning n. 1; with sense 5 compare earlier marooning n. 2.