Word.ws English Dictionary

climateric

climateric is the obsolete form of climacteric.

Meaning of climacteric

Adjective

climacteric (comparative more climacteric, superlative most climacteric)

  1. Pertaining to any of several supposedly critical years of a person's life.
    • Closely parallel to the belief in unlucky days was the notion of climacteric years, those periodic dates in a man's life which were potential turning-points in his health and fortune.1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 596
  2. Critical or crucial; decisive.
    • The seeds of a climateric insurrection against the hypocrisy of cultural norms.1991 May 4, Mary Dowd, “Risky Business”, in Gay Community News, page 7
  3. Relating to a period of physiological change during middle age; especially, menopausal.
  4. Climactic.
  5. (of fruit) That continues to ripen after being harvested.

See all 8 meanings of climacteric

Questions about climateric

What is climateric the obsolete form of?
Climateric is the obsolete form of climacteric.

Words near climateric in the dictionary

  1. climate-controlled
  2. climate-speak
  3. climateer
  4. climateers
  5. Climategate
  6. climateric
  7. climates
  8. climatespeak
  9. climatewise
  10. climatic
  11. climatic optimum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: climateric (page history and authors); climacteric (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “climateric.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/climateric. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.