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cataleptic

American  
[ka-tuh-lep-tik] / ˈkæ təˈlɛp tɪk /

adjective

  1. relating to, characteristic of, or affected by catalepsy.


noun

  • cataleptics
    plural
  1. a person experiencing or suffering from catalepsy.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

They didn’t have official Black Friday sales during the cataleptic 1970s, because the economy was in woeful shape and the public had basically given up on the idea of bargains.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 28, 2025

The man who defined the ideals of pictorial sentiment for an exceedingly pious age; whose angels and Blessed Damozels, Arthurian knights and shrinking, somewhat cataleptic virgins were the very essence of escapist painting.

From Time Magazine Archive

Throwing off the cataleptic spell of the cinema, she no longer seems to be waiting for a closeup.

From Time Magazine Archive

Rahman Bey, fakir, recently submerged himself for an hour, asserted that he owed his life to his ability to fall into a cataleptic trance.

From Time Magazine Archive

He stood stock still in rigid, cataleptic astonishment while the girls ambled in and made themselves comfortable.

From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

These things are not miraculous, being duplicated in experiments on involuntary cataleptics.

From Time Magazine Archive

This would account for the fact that places where cataleptics and idiots have died are often haunted by semi and by wholly animal types of phantasms.

From Werwolves by Elliott O'Donnell

Can you wonder that the country is being hypnotized by the sight of so many cantankerous cataleptics?

From Psycho-Phone Messages by Francis Grierson

Gradually life wrestled again out of winter, and the Knight, as cataleptics must, finished the address which he had begun with the word "Unlucky--" "woman, of whom art thou mother?"

From Titan: A Romance Vol. II (of 2) by Jean Paul

Suppose they were in the condition of cataleptics, sensible of what passed around them, but paralyzed to the motionlessness and seeming insensibility of death?

From The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark (William Clark) Russell

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