Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

climb-down

climb-down , noun

1.
a retraction of a previously held position.
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
Collocations (1)
Grand climacteric or Great climacteric , the sixty-third year of human life.