From an SEO standpoint a bunch of small pages would be better BUT...

You would need to optimize each one for its term including Title tag, <H1> or <H2> as well as <img alt=""> and sufficient occurrences in the text to elevate total phrase percentage on the page to between 3 and 5% to really get an advantage.

To do so might be cumbersome for the reader, and internet readers click off FAST.

You might be better off coming up with intuitive category pages, each of which displays 5 glossary terms per column so the viewer and eyeball it in 2 seconds.

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