climb-down

climb-down

n.
  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.

Phrases & Compounds

Grand climacteric
the sixty-third year of human life.