Perimenopause

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The physiological stage that women approaching menopause go through when, due to hormonal changes, they progress from their usual pattern of menstruation through a phase of atypical menstruation, and finally cease menstruating. Perimenopause ends when a woman has not menstruated for a year. uncountable

    "Researchers at eight locations across the United States plan to examine the safety and effectiveness of estrogen therapy during perimenopause, the few years just prior to menopause."

Synonyms

All synonyms
climactericclimacteric

Example

More examples

"Researchers at eight locations across the United States plan to examine the safety and effectiveness of estrogen therapy during perimenopause, the few years just prior to menopause."

Etymology

From peri- (“near”) + menopause. The term has been in use since at least 1931, when it was used in Joseph Bolivar De Lee and Jacob Pearl Greenhill's book, Obstetrics: Gynecology.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.