maroons

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of maroon.

   The designer paired deep maroons with soft grays for the fall collection.

   The Jamaican maroons defended their mountain settlements for generations.

   Note

   One spelling gathers several unrelated plurals: escaped slaves and their descendants, castaways, signal rockets, shades of dark red and, in derogatory slang, fools. Only context tells them apart. For the color, the plural names varieties of the shade (deep maroons and plums), while the color itself usually stays uncountable. The slang sense is an insult and is best avoided outside casual speech.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of maroon.

   The seasonal flood maroons dozens of families in the low-lying district.

   A single canceled ferry maroons travelers on the remote island overnight.

   Note

   A transitive verb form that shares its spelling with the plural noun: something maroons someone, leaving them stranded somewhere remote. The subject is often not a person at all. A flood, a storm or a canceled ferry can maroon people. Elsewhere the participle does most of the work, and a castaway is simply a person who has been marooned.

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