climacteric
nounEtymology From Latin clīmactēricus, from Koine Greek κλιμακτηρικός (klimaktērikós), from κλιμακτήρ (klimaktḗr, “scale, progression, gradation”).
1
A critical stage or decisive point; a turning point.
- It is your lot, as it was mine, to live during one of the grand climacterics of the world.1829, Robert Southey, “(please specify the page)”, in Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: John Murray, […], →OCLC:
- 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.
1 more example
- 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.1790 November, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. […], London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […], →OCLC:
2
A period in human life in which some great change is supposed to take place, calculated in different ways by different authorities (often identified as every seventh or ninth year).
3
Medicine, Sciences The period of life that leads up to and follows the end of menstruation in women; the menopause.
- 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.1998, Roger N J Smith, John W. W. Studd, The Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy, page 8:
- Derived terms
- grand climacteric, great climacteric
- Related terms
- menopausal