The word menopause literally means the permanent physiological, or natural, cessation of menstrual cycles, from the Greek roots 'meno-' (month) and 'pausis' (a pause, a cessation). In other words, menopause means the natural and permanent stopping of the monthly female reproductive cycles, and in humans this is usually indicated by a permanent absence of monthly periods or menstruation.

The word is commonly used in regard to human females, where menopause happens more or less in midlife, signaling the end of the fertile phase of a woman's life. Menopause is perhaps most easily understood as the opposite process to menarche.

Menopause in women cannot however simply be defined as the permanent "stopping of the monthly periods", because in reality what is happening to the uterus is quite secondary to the process. For medical reasons, the uterus is sometimes surgically removed (hysterectomy) in a younger woman, and after this her periods will cease permanently and the woman will technically be infertile, but as long as her ovaries (or one ovary) are, or is, still functioning, the woman will not be in menopause. This is because even without the uterus, ovulation, and the release of the sequence of reproductive hormones that are an essential part of the reproductive cycles, will continue until the time of menopause is reached.

Menopause is in fact triggered by the faltering and shutting down (or surgical removal) of the ovaries, which are a part of the body's endocrine system of hormone production, in this case the hormones which make reproduction possible and influence sexual behavior.

The process of the ovaries shutting down is a phenomenon which involves the entire cascade of a woman's reproductive functioning, from brain to skin, and this major physiological event usually has some effect on almost every aspect of a woman's body and life.