“Demise for Death. Usually said of a person of note. Demise means the lapse, as by death, of some authority, distinction, or privilege, which passes to another than the one that held it; as the demise of the Crown.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Mark's Text Terminal 