|
In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed... No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. Preface to 1828 Dictionary
|
CLIMACTERIC, a. Literally, noting a scale, progression, or gradation; appropriately, denoting a critical period of human life, or a certain number of years, at the end of which a great change is supposed to take place in the human constitution. [See the Noun.]
CLIMACTERIC, 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 63d year is called the grand climacteric. It has been supposed that these periods are attended with some remarkable change in respect o health, life or fortune.
Relating to a climacteric; critical.
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.
Any critical period.
It is your lot, as it was mine, to live during one
of the grand climacterics of the world. 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. | ||||||||