severance payment

noun

"severance-payment" is a 16-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

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

Unranked
below top-frequency English
17
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Money that an employer pays to an employee when the employee leaves the company in case of layoffs, often in exchange for some kind of waiver.

Corpus desk

Index EN-severance-payment · severance payment · English

severance payment · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 17 letters
  • VOW-7 7 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 payment
PropertyValue
Headwordseverance payment
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters17
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “severance payment” in English

severance paymentranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

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

Rare enough to double-check

severance payment is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Money that an employer pays to an employee when the employee leaves the company in case of layoffs, often in exchange for some kind of waiver.".

No misspelling variants are generated for severance payment in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is severance payment, spelled S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E- -P-A-Y-M-E-N-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    Money that an employer pays to an employee when the employee leaves the company in case of layoffs, often in exchange for some kind of waiver.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. And it gets worse. Barcelona will have to pay even more if he is fired in the interim. Last week, TV3 reported that a high severance payment - amounting to a total of about 12m euros - is on the table.

Synonyms

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 payment"?
"severance payment" is spelled S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E- -P-A-Y-M-E-N-T.
What does "severance payment" mean?
As a noun, "severance payment" means: Money that an employer pays to an employee when the employee leaves the company in case of layoffs, often in exchange for some kind of waiver.
What language does "severance payment" come from?
"severance payment" is a English word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
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