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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

It's time for a new term: a "Pegasus" (a different kind of mythical horse than a unicorn):

https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/658702918200250368

    Pegasus (n)
    1. Mythical winged horse;
    2. Silicon Valley 'unicorn' with high gross margin.
       i.e. one that might actually take off.

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God, "unicorn" is already stupid enough.

On the bright side, if you found that annoying, I've heard rhinos as being unicorns that became hopelessly obese and are dying out, with the fairly obvious business analogies. They're not dead unicorns because they're not dead. They're on the way though! And until the seemingly inevitable bankruptcy or shutdown, they're living rhinos. They'll be dead unicorns unless something turns around, sure. Or I guess you could call them dead rhinos?

A quick internet search of rhino and bubble and stuff like that has found nothing, I've only heard this verbally a couple times.

"Do you have a contingency plan for rolling your your (whatever) off (whatever)? They're a rhino, you know about that, right?"

That analogy would make sense, except for the fact that rhinos are real and very intimidating. Shouldn't a rhino be a unicorn that has survived an IPO or something?

Fight fire with fire.

A pegasus doesn't have a horn. A flying unicorn is usually called an "alicorn" but also pegacorn, unisus, or unipeg. /pedantic

To be far more pedantic, Pegasus is the name of a single flying horse, it's not the name for horses with wings.

And heaping on, Pegasus was not part of a breed or species. He was a one-off, the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa. He had a brother, Chrysaor, a man.

Obligatory Futurama reference:

  You are technically correct, the best kind
  of correct

:-)

Maybe jgrahamc already edited his comment, but I don't see that he ever said a pegasus had a horn.

On a separate matter, I would prefer to not use either term, but people love these convenient categories.

I was inferring from "unicorn... that might actually take off."

I didn't edit it.

No, the new term is "Cockroach" - https://medium.com/@caterina/the-age-of-the-cockroach-5a720d...

I'd suggest Icarus.

Flying high on wings of wax - until the sun gets too hot.

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