What's a Parable?

My eight-year-old asked me today, well, I'm working on, and I said, we're going to start writing how to read parables. And he said, what's a parable? So maybe we could start there. Well, okay, we'll actually here. We'll give a dictionary definition. Just because we're just starting with the basics. This is Merriam-Webster dictionary, famous American English dictionary. It's also free online, which makes it handy to use. Usually, a short, fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle.