verlof

The English word furlough — meaning a leave of absence from military duty or, by extension, from any employment — comes from Dutch verlof, meaning leave, permission, or authorized absence. The Dutch word is a compound of ver- (an intensifying prefix, related to English for- and German ver-) and lof, meaning permission or praise, derived from Middle Dutch lof, which is cognate with Old English lof meaning praise, permission, or honor, and with Old High German lob. The underlying sense is that of permission granted from above: the soldier, worker, or subject is released from duty by the explicit leave of an authority. Without that granted permission, the same absence would be desertion or dereliction.

The word entered English during the period of intensive Dutch-English military and commercial contact in the seventeenth century. English soldiers who served in the Dutch army — a common occurrence during the period of Protestant alliance against Catholic powers — encountered the Dutch system of regulated military leave and adopted the term for it. The Dutch army of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was notably professional and well-organized, and its administrative terminology was consequently precise. Verlof was a formal status with defined conditions: the soldier on verlof had permission to be absent from his unit for a specified period and was expected to return on the appointed date.

English initially rendered the word as vorloff or furloff before settling on furlough by the late seventeenth century. The gh ending, giving the word its characteristic spelling, may reflect an attempt to render a Dutch fricative sound (the -f in lof could be aspirated in certain Dutch dialects) or may simply be an English spelling convention applied to a foreign word. The military sense was the original and primary meaning: a furlough was an official leave of absence from military service, temporary and conditional on return. American military usage from the Revolutionary War onward gave the word its distinctly American flavor, where it referred both to the leave itself and to the document authorizing it.

The word moved from military to civilian usage gradually and accelerated dramatically in the early twenty-first century. During the United States government shutdowns of 2013 and 2018–2019, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were placed on furlough — sent home without pay pending the resolution of a budget impasse. The word suddenly acquired wide public visibility. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the UK government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme placed millions of workers on furlough, generating enormous public discussion of the word's meaning and implications. In a matter of months, furlough moved from a specialized military and administrative term to household vocabulary.