Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Climacteric?

\Cli*mac"ter*ic\ (? or ?; 277), a. [L. climactericus, Gr. ?. See {Climacter}.] Relating to a climacteric; critical.
\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.