Social security law

The nineteenth entry is l’indemnité journalière, and its noun is a false friend of the quiet kind, close enough to be copied and far enough to mislead. In British English « an indemnity » belongs to insurers, lawyers and treaties: a promise to make good a loss, as in « professional indemnity insurance », or a sum paid by way of compensation, as a defeated state once paid a war indemnity. It always answers damage. L’indemnité covers that ground too — l’indemnité d’expropriation compensates an owner whose land is taken — but its daily work is plainer. It is an allowance paid because a rule provides for it: l’indemnité kilométrique is a mileage allowance, l’indemnité de licenciement is severance pay, and l’indemnité parlementaire is simply what a member of parliament earns. Nothing was lost in any of them. So les indemnités journalières, shortened on a payslip to IJSS, are the daily payments the health insurer makes while somebody is off work sick, and the English for them is « sickness benefit ». « Daily indemnity » would promise compensation for a harm that nobody has suffered.