climacteric

adj

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.”

2. Critical or crucial; decisive.

   “The seeds of a climateric insurrection against the hypocrisy of cultural norms.”

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.

noun

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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

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. 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.”