Hypertext Webster Gateway: "climacteric"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Climacteric \Cli*mac"ter*ic\ (? or ?; 277), a. [L.
climactericus, Gr. ?. See {Climacter}.]
Relating to a climacteric; critical.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Climacteric \Cli*mac"ter*ic\, n.
1. A period in human life in which some great change is
supposed to take place in the constitution. The critical
periods are thought by some to be the years produced by
multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7, and 9; to
which others add the 81st year.
2. Any critical period.
It is your lot, as it was mine, to live during one
of the grand climacterics of the world. --Southey.
{Grand} or {Great climacteric}, the sixty-third year of human
life.
I should hardly yield my rigid fibers to be
regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand
climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to
stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds
of their barbarous metaphysics. --Burke.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
climacteric
n 1: a period in a man's life corresponding to menopause
2: the time in a woman's life in which the menstrual cycle ends
[syn: {menopause}, {change of life}]
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