Definition of "climacteric" []

• A period of life characterized by physiological and psychic change that marks the end of the reproductive capacity of women and terminates with the completion of menopause. (noun)
• A corresponding period sometimes occurring in men that may be marked by a reduction in sexual activity, although fertility is retained. (noun)
• A critical period or year in a person's life when major changes in health or fortune are thought to take place. (noun)
• A critical stage, period, or year: "before the end of the millennium, whether [he] lives to see that ecclesiastical climacteric or not” ( Conor Cruise O'Brien). (noun)
• Of or relating to a climacteric. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Fruits that do continue ripening off the tree are called climacteric."
• ""The years of the climacteric are the most troublesome in married life," the Czechoslovakian physician Arnold Lorand declared in his 1910 classic "Old Age Deferred" -- "not only for the wife, who is directly affected by it, but also in almost equal degree for the husband, who must show the greatest forbearance.""
• "The menopause, also called the climacteric, and in common language"