All 4 Uses

severance
in
Severance
(Edited)

By the end of his second year, corporate announced that policy regarding severance packages would be changed.
p. 136.9

severance = pay or benefits given to an employee whose job is eliminated
Severance would no longer be scaled according to the number of years that employees had worked, but the company would provide a flat fee for all employees who had worked there for fewer than ten years.
p. 136.9
Within the following year, almost all of the senior staff had been laid off, given their diminished severance payouts.
p. 137.1 *
My father rarely spoke of the past, and perhaps it was only after having officialized his severance from China that he felt free to speak openly of his life there.
p. 188.7 *

severance = separation (splitting away)

Definitions:

(1) (severance as in: severance pay)
pay and potentially other benefits given to an employee whose job is eliminated
(2) (severance as in: severance of the relationship)
the act of cutting off or ending a connection
(3) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)