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Webster 1913 Edition

Climacteric

Cli-mac′ter-ic

(? or ?; 277)
,
Adj.
[L.
climactericus
, Gr. [GREEK]. See
Climacter
.]
Relating to a climacteric; critical.

Cli-mac′ter-ic

,
Noun.
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 climacteric
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.

Webster 1828 Edition

Climacteric

CLIMACTERIC

,
Adj.
Literally, noting a scale, progression, or gradation; appropriately, denoting a critical period of human life, or a certain number of years, at the end of which a great change is supposed to take place in the human constitution. [See the Noun.]

CLIMACTERIC

,
Noun.
A critical period in human life, or a period in which some great change is supposed to take place in the human constitution. The critical periods are supposed by some persons to be the years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9; to which others add the 81st year. The 63d year is called the grand climacteric. It has been supposed that these periods are attended with some remarkable change in respect o health, life or fortune.

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