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marron

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French has two main words spelled marron: the chestnut, borrowed from Italian, and the runaway slave, a word of the French West Indies taken from Spanish.[1][2][3]

marron1 chestnut

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ma.ʁɔ̃/[4]

Forms

marron m (plural marrons)[4] Often written maron before the 19th century.[3]

Etymology

The chestnut is borrowed from Italian marrone (“large edible chestnut”), recorded in Italian from the early 14th century;[5] Medieval Latin had marro in a document from Como of 1176.[5][3] The Italian word is probably derived from a pre-Roman root meaning “stone, rock”, found from Italy to Portugal and especially in the Alps and the Pyrenees, the root also behind marelle.[5][3][1] The Grand Robert and Larousse call marron a word of the Lyon region, and the TLFi thinks it probably entered French through that area, where the large chestnuts were sold.[1][6][5] Littré, writing earlier, held the further origin of the Italian word to be unknown.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded in 1526, in Claude Gruget's translation of Pedro Mexía's Diverses leçons, for the fruit of the chestnut tree.[5][3] Olivier de Serres, in the 16th century, wrote that the chestnuts called marrons at Lyon were known all over France through the trade in them.[7]

Semantic evolution

The phrase tirer les marrons du feu “to pull the chestnuts out of the fire”, at first completed by avec la patte du chat “with the cat's paw” (1640), was made popular by La Fontaine's fable Le Singe et le Chat; it means to take risks for someone else's profit.[3][5] By analogy the word was given to the inedible seed of a quite different tree, the marron d'Inde or horse chestnut (1718).[3][5]

From couleur de maron (1706) came the noun and adjective of colour, now the everyday French word for brown; it is found as early as 1736 in a Montreal account book.[3][8][5] In the 18th century the word took several analogical senses now out of use: a round curl of hair (1680), a token dropped in a box by a night watchman to prove his round (1752), a firework banger (1752), the unburnt core of a lump of lime (1777) and a lump in bread dough (1782).[5][3] The familiar sense “punch in the face” (1881) was preceded by a plural use for “blows, a fight” in the slang of the Brest prison (1821); Rey explains it as a shift from the head that receives the blow to the blow itself, as with châtaigne.[5][3]

English took the colour as English maroon in 1791, from couleur marron.[9]

Timeline

  • 1526 – First record, for the large edible chestnut.[5]
  • 1640 – Oudin records tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat.[5][3]
  • 1680 – Richelet records the word for a round curl of hair.[5]
  • 1706 – Couleur de maron is the first record of the colour.[5][3]
  • 1718 – The Académie records marrons d'Inde, horse chestnuts.[5]
  • 1736 – Taffetas maron appears in a Montreal merchant's journal.[8]
  • 1752 – The Trévoux dictionary records the firework and the watchman's token.[5]
  • 1791 – English borrows the colour as maroon.[9]
  • 1821 – Prison slang uses du marron for blows and fighting.[5]
  • 1881 – Rigaud records the sense “punch in the face”.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The large edible chestnut of the cultivated chestnut tree;[2] marrons glacés are chestnuts candied in sugar.[2][6]
  2. Marron d'Inde: the inedible seed of the horse chestnut tree.[2][6]
  3. A reddish-brown colour.[2][6]
  4. (technical) A token used to check that a guard or worker is at their post.[2]
  5. (fireworks) A banger, a small cardboard case filled with powder.[6]
  6. (familiar) A punch, a blow with the fist.[2][6]

Adjective

  1. Brown, of a reddish or dark brown colour (invariable: des yeux marron).[2][6]

Word family

  • marronnier
  • marron glacé
  • tirer les marrons du feu

marron2 runaway

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ma.ʁɔ̃/[4]

Forms

marron (feminine marronne, masculine plural marrons, feminine plural marronnes)[4]

Etymology

The runaway is a word of the French West Indies, first recorded in 1640.[3][1] It is borrowed from Spanish cimarrón (“living in the hills; runaway”) with its first syllable dropped; the Spanish word in Spanish America was said of a domestic animal that had escaped and gone wild and of a fugitive Indian (1535).[3][1][2][4] Rey takes it through a Caribbean word meaning “wild”, said of animals and plants, and derives the Spanish word either from cima (“summit”) or from Old Spanish cimarra (“thicket”).[3] Littré, after Scheler, already traced it to the Spanish word, noting an older French form simarron.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the French Antilles it was first said of a domestic animal that had escaped and gone back to the wild, and, from 1658, of a black slave who had fled into the woods to live free;[3] Rey sees this second sense as a creation of the colonists, who compared the fugitive slave with an animal gone wild.[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense “living in the wild” is still used in the French of the Indian Ocean islands, and has been extended to plants (du café marron).[3][4] In France the word came to mean a person who practises a profession without the right to it, as a noun (1762) and as an adjective, as in courtier marron (1819) and later médecin, avocat marron, first with the idea of illegality, then of dishonesty.[3][8][1] A book printed clandestinely was called a maron in the slang of the book trade (1775); Mirabeau remarked in 1788 that the word showed how books and their authors were the censors' slaves.[8][3]

The English noun maroon “runaway slave” was borrowed from this word.[4]

Timeline

  • 1640 – First record, in the French West Indies.[3][1]
  • 1658 – Said of a slave who has fled to live free.[3]
  • 1762 – As a noun, a person who practises a trade without the right to it.[3]
  • 1775 – Marons are clandestinely printed books.[8]
  • 1819 – Courtier marron, an unlicensed broker.[8][1]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. (historical) Of a slave: having fled to live free in the wild (esclave marron).[2][1]
  2. Of a domestic animal: escaped and gone back to the wild.[1][7]
  3. Practising a profession illegally or dishonestly: médecin marron, avocat marron.[2][6]

Noun

  1. (historical) A runaway slave, a maroon.[4][7]

Word family

  • marronnage
  • marronner
  • marelle
  • châtaigne
  • Italian marrone
  • Spanish cimarrón
  • English maroon

Usage notes

A third, slang adjective marron “caught; duped” (être fait marron) is recorded from 1855, and earlier in marron paumé (1811); its origin is uncertain, but the Grand Robert and Rey link it most probably with the runaway word.[1][3][2] As adjectives of colour marron stays invariable (des chaussures marron), while marron, marronne “unlicensed” agrees (des avocats marrons).[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)
  7. ^ a b c d e Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
  8. ^ a b c d e f Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
  9. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com