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 etc) 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?”

Canossa

Canossa (pronounced kuh-nos-uh or kah-naws-sah (Italian))

(1) A province in Northern Italy (and a name used in other places and not to be confused with the proper noun Canosa).

(2) As Canossa Castle (now a ruin), near Reggio nell'Emili, the scene in 1077 of the penance of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV of before Pope Gregory VII (the “Walk to Canossa”).

(3) In idiomatic use, for a person to humble themselves.

Circa 940: The castle was built around 940 by a princely family of Lombardy at the summit of a hill overlooking the region.  As well as the family’s seat, the castle incorporated a convent, a Benedictine monastery and the church of Sant'Apollonio.  Reflecting the practice of military architecture in the Middle Ages, the central structure was protested by there, progressively more fortified stone walls and, prior to the development of modern artillery, was close to impregnable under conventional assault, vulnerable only to a protracted siege.

Going to Canossa

The coronation of Christmas Day, 800 when Charlemagne (747-814, Emperor of the Carolingian Empire (and retrospectively regarded first Holy Roman Emperor)), was crowned Emperor was an event which turned out to be one of the most significant of the Middle Ages, the consequences unfolding in Europe over a thousand years, some of which are visible still today.  One aspect of the coronation at the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome which Charlemagne almost immediately realized as a mistake was that the crown was placed on his head by Leo III (circa 750-816; pope 795-816, described by one historian as “one of the shiftiest” popes and one accused of perjury & adultery) with the words “To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-giving Emperor, life and victory.”  The squabble for primacy between the “vicar of Christ on earth” and the earthly rulers wasn’t new but this didn’t help their cause.  In 1804, at Notre Dame de Paris, snatching the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII (1742–1823; pope 1800-1823), Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821, Emperor of the French 1804-1814 & 1815) did not repeat the error.

One famous round in that squabble was Henry IV’s Walk to Canossa (also called the Road to Canossa or the Humiliation of Canossa.  It describes the ritualistic submission in 1077 of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV (1050–1106; King of Germany 1054-1105, Holy Roman Emperor 1084-1105) to Pope Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; pope 1073-1085) at Canossa Castle, the climax of what came to be called the investiture controversy.  Popes and emperors had for generations argued about the precedence of ecclesiastical or secular authority but Gregory had attempted further to assert the authority of Rome by claiming an exclusivity of right to "invest" bishops, abbots and other clergy, a dispute with modern echoes.  Despite attempts at mediation, the conflict grew, pope and emperor both appointing bishops, not recognized by each-other and eventually, the battle evolved into each side gathering bishops and organizing the numbers to excommunicate the other.  Given the communications of the age it was something of a slow-motion war of words but eventually (though not without the odd close scrape), Gregory prevailed and the excommunicated Henry lost the numbers, clerical and secular.  To seek his throne, he would have to capitulate, apologize and beg forgiveness.

Heinrich IV barefoot in Canossa (1862), woodcut by Hermann Freihold Pluddemann (1809-1868).

Accordingly, in what was said to be the coldest winter in almost forty years, Henry and his party made the trek to Canossa where the pope was staying, a journey made longer, more difficult and colder still by having to “go the long way round” because passage through the more convenient (and safer) alpine passes, controlled by forces aligned with the pope, was denied.  The journey took more than three months, the party reaching Canossa Castle on 25 January 1077.  There, the pope ordered he be refused entry, the suspicion of historians being that some message was passed to the visitors suggesting the gates might be opened were the emperor for three days to display “sufficient penance”.  According to legend, Henry (and perhaps some of his entourage including his wife) for the three days donned the simple robe of a monk, fasted and walked barefoot in the snow.

Fist bump: Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV before Pope Gregory VII (1875), woodcut after a drawing by Friedrich Hottenroth (1840-1917).

On 28 January, the pope ordered the castle gates opened and it’s said Henry supplicated himself on his knees before the pope and begged forgiveness.  Clearly impressed (or at least satisfied), Gregory granted absolution and revoked the act of excommunication, that evening offering the emperor communion in the chapel of Sant'Apollonio.  All’s well that ends well then, the pope lingering for a few months before returning to Rome with his authority confirmed and Henry headed home, soon to extract what vengeance he could.  Almost immediately the alpine pilgrimage was regarded as a humiliation for Henry but even some medieval scholars would soon create a revisionist history, arguing the emperor’s strategy was a masterstroke, gaining much which was important and sacrificing little.  Modern historians tend not to be convinced by the “stoops to conquer” school, regarding it a humiliation still and the phrase "going to Canossa" endures as a reference to an act of penance or submission.

Whether Canossa was much on the mind of President Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) as he flew to Saudi Arabia hasn’t been revealed but at least Air Force One is comfortable and he certainly didn’t need to go the “long way round”, his 747 granted a direct flight path from Tel Aviv to Jeddah, a presidential first and something long thought unimaginable.  Interestingly, according to the president, as recently as June 2022, also unimaginable was him meeting with Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (b 1985 and referred to colloquially as MBS).  “I’m not going to meet with MBS” Mr Biden had last month assured the press.  “I’m going to an international meeting, and he’s going to be part of it.”  That might seem a fine distinction but in the language of diplomacy, a not unreasonable one.

President Biden meets King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (b 1935; King of Saudi Arabia since 2015) Jeddah, July 2022.

However, the world has changed since the 2020 presidential campaign in which Mr Biden vowed to make the Saudi government “pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are”, his stridency a reaction to the murder and dismemberment in Saudi’s Istanbul consulate of Washington Post journalist (and Saudi citizen) Jamal Khashoggi (1958-2018) by agents of the Saudi state.  On advice from the US intelligence community, Mr Biden in 2020 made clear he held MBS personally responsible for Khashoggi’s death although doubts have by some been expressed, their thinking that MBS may well have authorized “an extraction” but not “an execution” and the unfortunate consequences were a product either of misunderstandings as the message proceeded down the line or the allocation of a specialized task to specialists in another field.  MBS has always denied ordering the killing of Mr Khashoggi, answering with an emphatic “Absolutely not” when asked directly by the US press.  “This was a heinous crime” he said in an interview, adding that he took “…full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”  The taking of responsibility for acts committed by others, including those of which one has no knowledge, is the essence of the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility although a more nuanced expression of the concept which extended to a “collective responsibility” was later developed by Albert Speer (1905-1980) during the first Nuremberg trial (1945-1946).  The Saudi government had initially denied any involvement in the matter although later it would admit the death was an accident which happened when an intelligence team was attempting to extradite (in Turkish law presumably a kidnapping) the journalist, against his will, to Saudi Arabia.

Fist bump: President Biden meets Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Jeddah, July 2022.

But the world has changed and to mark that, Mr Biden and MBS met, a friendly fist bump a photo opportunity for the gathered press pack, the entrance to the Al Salman Palace a good backdrop.  According to Mr Biden, MBS “…basically said that he was not personally responsible” for the killing of Khashoggi and “I indicated that I thought he was.”  What’s done is done and can’t be undone so, the discussion of human rights complete, the president and crown prince then got down to the substantive matter of oil and how helpful it would be if the kingdom could pump more of it from their fields, the unchallenging idea being that if supply could be made to exceed demand (which is already the case so presumably what Mr Biden would prefer is a glut), then the price would fall, this eventually being reflected in the cost of a gallon of gas in the US, hopefully in good time for the US mid-term congressional elections in November.

Just like the old days.

Industry analysts have cast doubt on whether the Saudis have the additional extractive and distributional capacity greatly to affect the price of oil which has anyway recently declined in response to concerns about a global economic slowdown although jitters remain, the oil futures market reacting hourly to news of COVID lockdowns and hints about monetary policy from those central banks which matter.  It’s thought MBS is unlikely to have done more than agree to act in unison with whatever increase in supply the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) may undertake to implement when it (actually the expanded OPEC+) meets in August.  Still, August is a couple of months before the mid-terms so there’s that but these are troubled times, few anxious to predict what the economy or geopolitics will look like by then, any more than there's a model precisely to measure the effects of what the US Treasury still insist will be the next round of sanctions on Russian oil & gas.  Like the OPEC+ meeting, these are due in August.  

Phony

Phony (pronounced foh-nee)

(1) Not real or genuine; fake; counterfeit; imitation; hoax.

(2) An insincere or pretentious person.

1890s:  Phony is thought a US vernacular alteration of the British fawney, the word for a gilded brass ring used in a confidence trick called the "fawney rig".  In this scam, the trickster drops a ring (or a purse containing some valuables) and runs to pick the item up at the same time as the victim who spies it on the ground.  The trickster asserts that the found treasure should be split between them and the victim who "found" the item, convinced now of its value, is persuaded give the con artist some money in order to keep the phony item.  The alternative (mostly UK) spelling is phoney.  Actual origin of fawney seems to be a descriptor of a finger-ring, a word brought to England by the Irish, derived from the Irish fáinne (ring) and it’s likely the Irish Diaspora which introduced it to the United States.  Although it’s a bit murky, fáinne may be derived from the same Indo-European root (hehno) as the Latin ānus (ring) which existed also in Old French and first noted in English in 1658.

Speculative alternatives have been suggested.  An early twentieth-century notion thought it from a use of a telephone to lure victims to false appointments in order that a criminal operation might be carried out, further conjecturing connections either with phoo, a term of contempt, or funny.  No etymological evidence was offered.  Another origin, widely circulated by the popular press, says the word is derived from the name of a manufacturer of cheap jewellery, a Mr Forney and it’s likely the authors mistook fawney for the sadly maligned chap.  The OED agrees phony originates in colloquial American English, but dates it from an 1893 reference to the horse-racing slang, “phony bookmakers,” quoting The Chicago Tribune.  The OED defines them as “unofficial bookmakers issuing betting slips on which they do not intend to pay out.” 

Most interesting (and least likely) is the pondered derivation from Ancient Greek via Latin with an origin said to date from the Punic Wars.  During these wars, the Romans used the phrase “Punic Faith” which implied treacherousness and dishonesty and Poeni is the Latin word from which is derived Punic, itself from the Ancient Greek Phoeni.  While it seems the Phoenicians were regarded by the Romans as an untrustworthy lot, two-thousand-odd years passed before phony emerged in English and there’s no support for the theory.  Apparently unrelated too is the linguistic coincidence that in Welsh, poeni means “to hurt, to ail, to pain, to worry, to fret, to pester, to plague, to bother or to nag”.

Fake, phony and truthful hyperbole

The Trump presidency saw a spike in the use of phony.  Donald Trump (b 1946; US President 2017-2021) liked the word, using it to against both opponents and any news outlet at all critical, taking alliterative delight in describing Elizabeth Warren (b 1949, United States Senator for Massachusetts since 2013) as “a phony Pocahontas…” after her DNA test revealed the Native American bloodline she’d claimed was less than a small fraction of one percent.  In general use, he prefers the punchier fake news but also uses phony, often as a synonym but also as an analogue for negative.  In his 1978 book The Art of the Deal (which if Trump didn’t entirely write, he at least influenced), he noted the effectiveness of “…an innocent form of exaggeration…” which he called “…truthful hyperbole”, something his many critics noted was well suited to the age of social media and claimed was but a variation of the Nazis’ rule of propaganda that small lies are ineffective but big lies work well.  That’s most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945; Reich Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945) but is actually from the first volume of Adolf Hitler’s (1889–1945; German Chancellor 1933-1945) Mein Kampf, Goebbels memorably using the phrase years later in a critique of British wartime propaganda.  Goebbels was however well aware of the limitations of the use of untruths and in The Art of the Deal, Trump also cautioned there were limits to what can be done with variations of the phony, not so much what but for how long:  “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

Others like it too.  Mitt Romney (b 1947, US senator (Republican) for Utah since 2019), thinking Trump had no chance of winning the presidency, labelled him “…a phony and a fraud” adding “…his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.''  They did (briefly) make up, apparently without “multiple choice” Mitt having to drop to his knees (although that was never confirmed or denied), the former president endorsing Romney’s successful 2018 mid-term campaign to replace Orrin Hatch (1934-2022) as a senator for Utah. 

Donald Trump and "multiple choice" Mitt Romney, Jean-Georges Restaurant, Trump International Hotel & Tower, New York, 2016.

Trump’s endorsement for the Senate seat was however little more than a pat on the head for a well-behaved vassal.  A little after Trump won the 2016 election, Romney, rather as King Henry IV (1050–1106; King of Germany from 1054-1105, Holy Roman Emperor from 1084-1105) made his pilgrimage to Canossa to seek forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII (circa 1015–1085; Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States 1073-1085), turned up at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York to pay homage and, essentially, beg for a job.  “I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump” Romney gushed after dinner with Trump at the hotel’s Jean-Georges restaurant.  “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening and interesting and engaging. I’ve enjoyed them very, very much.”  Clearly Romney wanted to be secretary of state, the US’s chief diplomat.  That would have been an interesting assignment, given that in decades of public life Romney had shown scant evidence of original thought, so he’d have been Trump’s errand-boy, parroting a foreign policy not of his own creation, most observers concluded his desire for an important job outweighed his dislike for Trump.  What he thought being the international emissary for a man he’d earlier condemned as “neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president” either didn’t cross his mind or didn’t matter because he just wanted an important job.  Trump missed the opportunity to appoint Romney which was a shame because he’d have been a fine addition to a cabinet which might have included Rudy Giuliani as attorney-general, Sarah Palin as treasury secretary, Newt Gingrich as defense secretary (Ted Cruz an obvious choice as CIA director).  Something like that, truly a ministry of all the talents, would have been good to watch.

Serial phoney tans on Lindsay Lohan (although it's suspected the magazines and web sites sometimes, deepened the color saturation for a more dramatic look; the preferred term is "fake tan".  In fairness however, the redheads and other freckled folk should avoid the sun and use spray-on and other tanning products in preference to any form of radiation, natural or artificial.  An even more desirable option is to embrace the pale ascetic, and alluring look and one which offers glittering opportunities to contrast with dark fabrics, rubies, emeralds and sapphires.   

Phoney Time: One of the "Time magazine covers" prominently once displayed in several Trump golf courses; wholly phoney, they’ve since been removed.  By 2024, Mr Trump had twice been named Time's "Person of the Year" so the old photo frames from the golf courses can be re-used.

In A Brief History of Time (1988), English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) used the concept of "imaginary time" as a conceptual tool to illustrate certain aspects of his theories but imaginary covers of Time magazine are something different.  Imaginary time has been misunderstood and, given the mysteriousness of much of which it's used to describe, that's perhaps understandable.  What it is is a mathematical representation of time used to build models of the relationship between special relativity and quantum mechanics, expressed using equations written with what mathematicians call imaginary numbers.  For most of us, it replaces one impenetrable idea with another but between consenting mathematicians and cosmologists in the privacy of their labs, it's a hoot.