functions in a dictionary

[Skaperen]

it has been said not to define functions by assigning a lambda. but i want to have a dictionary (or list as the use case may be) contain a bunch of functions (perhaps small ones). i see no easy way to do this with def:

def function_collection['foobah'](a): # invalid syntax
    return a*a+a

the only clean way looks like:

function_collection['foobah'] = lambda a:a*a+a

is this an OK exception?

yeah, i know you can do a def then assign that name to the dictionary item. but that just looks so ugly:

def foobah(a):
     return a*a+a
function_collection['foobah'] = foobah