marooned; marooning; maroons
1
: to put ashore on a desolate island or coast and leave to one's fate
2
: to place or leave in isolation or without hope of ready escape
plural maroons
1
: a person who is marooned
2
maroon
or Maroon
: a Black person of the Americas who escaped slavery and formed or joined a free and often secluded settlement or a descendant of such a person
Wherever Africans were enslaved in the world, there were runaways who escaped permanently and lived in free independent settlements. These people and their descendants are known as "maroons."—Richard Grant
From the late 17th century to the end of the [U.S.] Civil War, thousands of maroons—runaways who obtained their freedom by occupying remote and uninhabited regions—lived in relative secrecy throughout the 750-square-mile wilderness.—Lex Pryor
especially,
usually Maroon
: a maroon of the West Indies or Guiana in the 17th and 18th centuries or a descendant of such a person
In the eighteenth century, a number of Africans … who had been enslaved on plantations in French Guiana and Suriname escaped their forced labor and gathered in groups in the forests between colonial settlements. There these rebels, called Maroons, built their own communities. … Today, Maroons are still living where their ancestors literally cleared paths … —Hilton Als
Decades before, in 1796, the diaspora began setting down roots in Canada when 600 Jamaican Maroons (the descendants of enslaved people who had escaped) were deported from Jamaica to Nova Scotia. —Danica Samuel
Cite this Entry
“Maroon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maroon. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.
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