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.