Word.ws English Dictionary

on the club

on the club adjective: temporarily away from work, usually due to sickness, supported by sickness benefit.

Adjective

on the club (not comparable)

  1. (UK, slang) Temporarily away from work, usually due to sickness, supported by sickness benefit.
    • Then he crept up the stone stairs behind the drapery shop at the Co-op., and peeped in the reading-room. Usually one or two men were there, either old, useless fellows, or colliers "on the club".1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 5”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC

Origin of on the club

From the term benefit club.

Questions about on the club

What does on the club mean?
On the club means temporarily away from work, usually due to sickness, supported by sickness benefit.
What part of speech is on the club?
On the club is an adjective.

Words near on the club in the dictionary

  1. on the cards
  2. on the carpet
  3. on the case
  4. on the cheap
  5. on the clock
  6. on the club
  7. on the come
  8. on the contrary
  9. on the couch
  10. on the count of
  11. on the critical list

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the club (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-on the club.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on the club.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_club. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.