ANACHRONISM, in matters of literature, an error with respect to chronology, whereby an event is placed earlier than it really happened. The word is compounded of the negative an, and chronos, time. Such is that of Virgil, who places Dido in Africa at the time of Aeneas, though in reality she did not come thither till 300 years after the taking of Troy.
ANACLASTIC GLASSES (ἀνα, and κλάσις, a breaking), a kind of sonorous flat-bellied phials, resembling inverted funnels, with bottoms extremely thin, and slightly convex. They have the property of emitting a vehement noise when alternately filled with air and exhausted by the mouth. In Germany, where they are chiefly made, they are called vexier gläser, i. e., vexing glasses, on account of the disturbance they occasion by their resiliency.