Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CLI-MAC'TER-IC, n.

A critical period in human life, or a period in which some great change is supposed to take place in the human constitution. The critical periods are supposed by some persons to be the years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9; to which others add the 81st year. The 63rd year is called the grand climacteric. It has been supposed that these periods are attended with some remarkable change in respect to health, life or fortune. – Brown. Dryden. Pope.