a. (and sb.) [ad. late L. catalēptic-us, a. Gr. καταληπτικός cataleptic, f. καταληπτ-ός seized, f. καταλαμβάνειν το seize upon.]
A. adj. 1. Med. a. Affected by catalepsy.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., III. 86. Galen … allows Malmsey-wine to Cataleptick persons.
1862. Lytton, Str. Story, II. 224. A cataleptic or ecstatic patient.
1866. [Anne Thackeray Ritchie], in Cornh. Mag., Sept., 379. A soulless body, a cataleptic subject mesmerized by a stronger will.
b. Of or pertaining to catalepsy.
1794–6. E. Darwin, Zoon. (1801), I. 325. Reverie is a disease of the epileptic or cataleptic kind.
1817. Mar. Edgeworth, Love & L., III. xliv. 171. The cataleptic rigidity of his figure relaxed.
1861. Geo. Eliot, Silas M., i. 7. Silas’s cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer meeting.
2. Philos. Pertaining to apprehension.
1847. Lewes, Hist. Philos. (1867), I. 356. Of true phantasms, some are cataleptic (apprehensive) and others non-cataleptic…. The cataleptic phantasm is that which is impressed by an object that exists.
B. sb. One affected by catalepsy.
1851. H. Mayo, Pop. Superst. (ed. 2), 118. The cataleptic apprehends or perceives directly the objects around her.
1862. J. Cunningham, in Macm. Mag., April, 514. There have been cataleptics … who had two distinct currents of existence.
Hence (in Med.) Cataleptiform, Cataleptoid, adjs., resembling catalepsy.
1847–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., IV. 695/1. This contraction … may keep it [the limb] fixed in a cataleptiform.
1881. Syd. Soc. Lex., Cataleptoid.
