The Collaborative International Dictionary
Great climacteric
climb-down \climb-down\ n. 1. a retraction of a previously held position.
Syn: withdrawal, backdown.
Grand climacteric 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.