climacteric: in women, the menopause; in men, the life changes that may or may not occur as the counterpart of the menopause in women.

Dictionary of Sexology Project: Main Index

Cli*mac"ter*ic [L. climactericus, Gr. . See Climacter.]

Relating to a climacteric; critical.

 

© Webster 1913.


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.

GrandGreat 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.

 

© Webster 1913.

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