Colours and qualities

Ninth in this list stands marrone, and it is the one colour name here that an English reader will mishear. Marrone is the ordinary Italian word for brown — scarpe marroni, gli occhi marroni, una giacca marrone — and before it was a colour it was a thing: il marrone is the big sweet chestnut, the one sold roasted on a winter street. English owns the same word in the shape « maroon », and it does not mean brown at all. It names a dark brownish crimson, the colour of a school blazer or a college scarf, and nobody would reach for it to describe shoes or eyes. Our word for the colour is « brown », which is Germanic and has nothing to do with any nut. So the resemblance misleads in both directions: hearing marrone and thinking « maroon » shifts the shade several steps towards red, while saying marrone when you mean « maroon » gives plain brown. Treat marrone as « brown », and when the darker red is really meant, say bordeaux or rosso scuro instead.