Cli-măc'ter-ie or Climæ-tĕr'ie, n.

(123), n.

1Sense 1. 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 thought to be the years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7, and 9; to which others add the 81st year.

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.

2Sense 2. Any critical period.

Many mitered abbeys have survived the dangerous climacterical of the third generation. Fuller.

Grand or great climacteric, the 63d year. “Being my birthday, and I now entering my great climacterical of 63.” Evelyn.