Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Climacteric \Cli*mac"ter*ic\ (? or ?; 277), a. [L.
   climactericus, Gr. ?. See {Climacter}.]
   Relating to a climacteric; critical.

Climacteric \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.

Source : WordNet®

climacteric
     n 1: a period in a man's life corresponding to menopause
     2: the time in a woman's life in which the menstrual cycle ends
        [syn: {menopause}, {change of life}]