severance pay

noun

"severance-pay" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“severance pay” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
13
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Money paid as compensation to someone whose employment is ended, often in exchange of waiver.

Corpus desk

Index EN-severance-pay · severance pay · English

severance pay · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 13 letters
  • VOW-6 6 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "S" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for severance pay
PropertyValue
Headwordseverance pay
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters13
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “severance pay” in English

severance paysits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

severance pay is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Money paid as compensation to someone whose employment is ended, often in exchange of waiver.".

severance pay has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is severance pay, spelled S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E- -P-A-Y.

Definition

  1. 1
    Money paid as compensation to someone whose employment is ended, often in exchange of waiver.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how severance pay appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. The only case for severance pay on top is that fortunes in public life are so uncertain that some MPs might be discouraged from seeking office if there weren’t any cushion.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "severance pay"?
"severance pay" is spelled S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E- -P-A-Y.
What does "severance pay" mean?
As a noun, "severance pay" means: Money paid as compensation to someone whose employment is ended, often in exchange of waiver.
What language does "severance pay" come from?
"severance pay" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list