climacteric

English

Etymology

From Latin climactericus, from Ancient Greek κλίμάκτήρίκος (“scale, progression, gradation”).

Noun

climacteric (plural climacterics)

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. The period of life that leads up to and follows the end of menstruation in women; the change of life
   • 1998, Smith, Roger N J, and Studd, John W. W., The Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy, p. 8:

     Once women have traversed the turmoil of the climacteric years and reached the hormonal steady-state of the post-menopause, there is almost certainly no increase in the incidence of depression.

3. A critical stage or decisive point; a crisis
4. Grand or Great climacteric, the sixty-third year of human life.
   • Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since, p. 66-67.

     [H]e was in his grand climacterick, with a florid brow, and a step like youthful agility. Sigourney, Lydia.

   • Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France., p. 52.

     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.

References

• climacteric in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• 'climacteric', in Webster, Noah, 1844, "An American dictionary of the English language: exhibiting the origin, orthography, pronunciation, and definition of words". Harper. p. 152

Adjective

climacteric (comparative more climacteric, superlative most climacteric)

1. Of or pertaining to the climacteric
2. critical or crucial

See also

• menopausal