Summit Meetings Got Their Name From Churchill
A summit is the top of a mountain. Winston Churchill applied the word to talks between heads of state in 1950, and it stuck.
A summit is the highest point of a mountain, or the highest level of anything. The political sense has a date: in 1950 Winston Churchill called for a *parley at the summit* between the leaders of the great powers, and within a few years any meeting of heads of state was a summit. It was a metaphor about altitude that became a fixture of diplomacy.
- A mountain top. *They reached the summit at dawn.*
- A meeting of leaders. *A climate summit.*
- The highest point. *At the summit of her career.*
- Summit meeting — the fuller phrase. *A three-day summit meeting.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | summit | The summit ridge. |
| Plural | summits | Annual summits. |
| Verb | summit | They summited at noon. |
| Latin root | summus | Highest. |
| Related | sum | The sum total. |
- The summit was hidden in cloud.Mountaineering.
- The summit produced no agreement.Diplomacy.
- Two climbers summited that morning.The verb, mountaineering jargon.
Why sum and summit are related
- Latin summus — highest
- Romans wrote sums from the bottom up, so the total sat at the top
- Sum — the amount at the top of the column
- Summary — the main points, the highest-level version
- Summit — the top itself
Old French *somete*, from *som*, a summit, from Latin *summum*, the highest, from *summus*. English has had it since the 1400s; the diplomatic sense dates from 1950.
Why is a total called a sum?
Because Roman accounts were added upward and the total stood at the top of the column. Summus means highest.
Who first used summit for a meeting?
Winston Churchill, in a 1950 speech calling for a parley at the summit between world leaders.