Summit

Summit (pronounced suhm-it)

(1) Highest point or part, as of a hill, a line of travel, or any object; top; apex; peak, pinnacle; acme, zenith, culmination.

(2) One’s highest point of attainment or aspiration.

(3) A meeting of heads of government.

(4) In mountaineering, any point higher than surrounding points (distinguished by topographic prominence as subsummits (low prominence) or independent summits (high prominence)).

(5) In mountaineering to ascend to the peak.

1425–1475: From the Late Middle English somete, borrowed from the Middle French and drawn from the Old French sommette, diminutive of som (highest part, top of a hill).  Ultimate source was the Latin summum, the noun use of neuter of summus (highest) + -ete or -et as the suffix and it’s from here English ultimately picked-up super.  Summit is a noun & verb; subsummit & summiteers are nouns, summital & summitless are adjectives and summited & summiting are verbs; the noun plural is summits.  The nouns minisummit & presummit are creations of twentieth century diplomacy and have (not always happily) been applied adjectivally.

Summits (meetings between those in charge of tribes, groups, nations etc to discuss issues) predate civilization but the adoption of the word for this purpose is recent.  Usually summits are public but some have been secret and in the age of modern communications, they’re not the novelty once they were.  Some are famous, such as Henry IV’s (1050–1106; Holy Roman Emperor 1084-1105) Walk to Canossa in 1077 to beg the forgiveness of Pope Saint Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; pope 1073-1085) and seek absolution of his excommunication.  Others were cynical; the notorious 1938 Munich Conference was attended by the heads of government of France, Germany, Italy and the UK.  The meaning "meeting of heads of government" is from Winston Churchill's (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) 1950 metaphor of "…a parley at the summit" and was first widely used in 1955 when the phrase “Geneva Summit” appeared on press releases, menus and the final communiqué.  The classic summits were probably the great set-piece events conducted during World War II (1939-1945) and subsequently those of the high Cold War but there have since been many summits (notably the G5, G7, G8, G20 et al) but the term has somewhat become devalued because it’s not uncommon for events not involving heads of government so to be described.  While treasurer, Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) once suggested “a summit” which didn’t include the prime-minister; Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) soon corrected his error.

Great power summits have over the years excited more expectations than ever they have delivered.  Noted summiteer Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) was aware of this but in his prolific post-presidential career as an author altered his rationalizations depending on the point he wished to make.  While he could write that he was "...well aware that our highly successful summit meeting in 1972 might spawn euphoric expectations among the American people... [and that] I knew knew I stood politically to benefit from such euphoria, I tried to damp it down and keep our successes in perspective", he admitted elsewhere that "...creation of a willowy euphoria is one of the dangers of summitry".  Warming to the idea of a confession (not a feeling which often overcame him), he added of the public atmosphere in 1972 that "... I must assume a substantial part of the responsibility for this.  It was election year and I wanted the political credit."  The contradictions are just part of what makes Nixon the most interesting president of the modern era.          

Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton on the infamous front page in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, 29 November 2006.  The car was a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199; 2003-2010).

In mountaineering, a summit is any point higher than surrounding points (distinguished by topographic prominence as subsummits (low prominence) or independent summits (high prominence)) and those who attempts to summit a peak are summiteers.  Thus when summiteers Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986) in 1953 summited the summit of Mount Everest, they became the first people ever to stand on the highest point on Earth.  That achievement provided a fun footnote in the long list of crooked Hillary Clinton’s (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) lies (which she calls “misspeaking”), one of which was “My mother named me after Sir Edmund Hillary”.  The claim was based on her finding his climbing of Mount Everest so inspiring, thus explaining the double-l spelling of her name but the assent of the summit came a half decade after her birth.  The story was later “clarified” when a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the famous mountaineer but the account “...was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.”  Despite this, it remains unclear if crooked Hillary lied about her own name or was accusing her mother of lying.  Still, given everything else, “…at this point, what difference does it make?”