Does 'climacteric' necessarily express a 'peak' after which there will be a 'decline'?

Relevant present-day definitions of 'climacteric' and 'menopause'

The problem for Mr. Broadbent is that the definitions of menopause are narrow and physiological. From The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition (2011):

menopause n. 1. The permanent cessation of menstruation, usually occurring between the ages of 45 and 55. 2. The period during which such cessation occurs. In both senses, also called climacteric.

But the definitions of climacteric are not similarly limited. Again from AHDEL, fifth edition:

climacteric n. 1a. See menopause. b. See perimenopause ["The period of a woman's life characterized by physiological changes associated with the end of reproductive capacity, terminating with the completion of menopause"]. 2. A critical period or year in a person' life when major changes in health or fortune are thought to take place. 3. A critical stage, period, or year: "before the end of the millennium, whether [he] lives to see that ecclesiastical climacteric or not" (Conor Cruise O'Brien). adj. 1. Of or relating to a climacteric. 2. Critical; crucial. {< Latin clīmactēricus, of a dangerous period in life < Greek klīmaktērikos < klīmaktēr, dangerous point, rung of a ladder < klīmax, ladder; see CLIMAX.}

Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) differs from AHDEL in listing a non-menopause-related meaning of the noun form of climacteric before the menopause-related meaning:

climacteric n (ca. 1630) 1 : a major turning point or critical stage 2 a : MENOPAUSE b : a period in the life of a male corresponding to female menopause and usu. occurring with less well defined physiological and psychological changes 3 : the marked and sudden rise in the respiratory rate of fruit just prior to full ripening

Merriam-Webster, by the way, lists a first occurrence date for menopause of 1872. Somewhat mystifyingly, the Eleventh Collegiate dates climacteric as an adjective to 1582 and yet lists its definitions as "1 : constituting or relating to a climacteric [although climacteric as a noun isn't found in English until 48 years later] 2 : CRITICAL, CRUCIAL."

The back story on 'climacteric' and 'menopause'

Early dictionaries tend to support the Eleventh Collegiate's order of definitions for climacteric as a noun. The earliest dictionary notice of climacteric (in the form climactericall) that I am aware of is from John Bullokar, An English Expositor: Teaching the Interpretation of the Hardest Words Used in Our Language (1616), which uses the word to to indicate a year of special numerological significance:

Climactericall. A Greeke word signifying an account or reckoning, made by certaine degrees or steppes. Some haue heereby diuided the age of mans life after this manner. The seuenth yeare they reckon for dangerous; and by this account the 14, 21. 28. 35. &c. are climactericall yeares. Likewise the ninth yeare is esteemed equallie as dangerous, and by this account, the 18. 27. 36. &c. are called Climactericall yeares. But the most noted and famous Climactericall yeare, is at the age of 63. because both accounts doe meete in this number ; namely 7. times 9. and 9. times 7. And this is held the most dangerous yeare of all other.

As Mr. Broadbent was born on February 1, 1963, he is four years past the dangerous age of 49, and seven months away from the dangerous age of 54, so he really has no excuse.

Not much had changed by the time of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), which includes these entries:

CLIMACTER, n. s. A certain space of time, or progression of years, which is supposed to end in a critical and dangerous time. [Cited occurrence:] Elder times, settling their conceits upon climacters, differ from one another. Brown's Vulgar Errours.

CLIMACTERICK, CLIMACTERICAL. adj. {from climacter} Containing a certain number of years, at the end of which some great change is supposed to befal the body. [Cited occurrences:] Certain observable years are supposed to be attended with some considerable change in the body ; as the seventh year ; the twenty-first, made up of three times seven ; the forty-ninth, made up of seven times seven ; the sixty third, being nine time seven ; and the eighty-first, which is nine times nine : which to last are called the grand climactericks. [Brown] The numbers seven and nine, multiplied into themselves, do make up sixty-three, commonly esteemed the great climacterical of our lives. [Brown] Your lordship being now arrived at your grand climacterique, yet give no proof of the least decay of your excellent judgment and comprehension. [Dryden] My mother ois something better, tho', at her advanced age, every day is a climacterick.

Johnson's reference to "Brown's Vulgar Errours" is to Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths, first published in 1646, which devotes an entire chapter to "The Great Climacterical Year, that is, Sixty-three."

The first full-size Merriam-Webster dictionary to explicitly associate climacteric with menopause is also the first such dictionary to include an entry for menopause—and even in this instance the actual connection is made not in the entry for climacteric but in a subentry for change of life under longer entry for the noun change, in Webster's International Dictionary (1890):

Change of life, the period in the life of a woman when menstruation and the capacity for conception cease, usually occurring between forty-five and fifty years of age ; — called also menopause, climacteric, turn of life, etc.**

This dictionary's entries for climacteric aren't exactly direct on the menopause front:

Climacteric a. Relating to a climacteric; critical.

Climacteric n. 1. 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. 2. Any critical period.

But its entry for menopause is plain and to the point:

Menopause n. (Med.) The period of natural cessation of menstruation. See Change of life, under CHANGE.

So menopause was an explicitly medical term when it first reached popular consciousness, and this occurred at roughly the same time that climacteric expanded to acquire a new meaning that amounts to a euphemism for menopause along the lines of change of life and turn of life.

Conclusions

I have to say that, on this record, only the flimsiest of dictionary equivalences is available to justify Mr. Broadbent's use of menopausal as interchangeable with climacteric. For a somewhat comparable case, consider the entry in AHDEL, fifth edition, for impotent:

impotent adj. 1. Lacking physical strength or vigor; weak. 2. Lacking in power, s to act effectively; helpless: "Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is impotent" (Freeman J. Dyson). 3. Incapable of sexual intercourse because of an inability to achieve or sustain an erection. 4. Obsolete Lacking self-restraint.

Now suppose that, channeling Freeman J. Dyson, Mr. Broadbent had said, apropos of the Bank of England's use of technology,

"Technology without morality is barbarous; morality without technology is erectilely dysfunctional."

It wouldn't work—not because impotent doesn't mean (among other things) "erectilely dysfunctional," but because "erectilely dysfunctional" doesn't mean any of those other things that impotent can mean.

Menopausal is a similarly narrow clinical term that has not crossed over into figurative use in the sense of "crucial or critical," however much Mr. Broadbent may wish that it had.