the.com/severance
the corporate goodbye that pays you to leave quietly and never mention the lawsuit
means Money or benefits paid to an employee when their employment ends, especially involuntarily; more broadly, the act of cutting something off or apart.
from From the verb 'sever,' which came through Old French 'sevrer' from Latin 'separare' — 'to separate, pull apart.' The same Latin root gives us 'separate' itself; 'sever' is just its rougher, more violent-sounding cousin, worn down by centuries of French mouths. The '-ance' suffix turns the cutting into a thing — so 'severance' is, quite literally, the state of being cut loose. The payroll sense, where being severed comes with a check, is a relatively modern extension of that older meaning of clean separation.
- origin
- From Latin 'separare,' to pull violently apart
- hush clause
- Often bundled with silence about why you left
- weeks owed
- Typically one to two weeks per year served
- not required
- US law mandates no severance whatsoever
- taxed hard
- IRS treats it as ordinary wages, fully withheld
general motors severance 2019 — gm offered up to $40,000 plus extended benefits to employees in plant closures
lehman brothers severance 2008 — employees received minimal severance (sometimes zero) during the bankruptcy collapse