A highly favored position. The term appears to have been originated by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who wrote (ca. 1660), “There’s my place in the sun: behold the image and beginning of the entire earth’s usurpation.” It did not, however, become widely known until it was used around the turn of the twentieth century concerning Germany’s position in the world, at first by Bernhard von Bülow (1897) and later, several times, by Emperor William II, as a justification for his country’s territorial ambitions. Subsequently, the term came to be used in somewhat more benign fashion to mean simply the glow of public recognition and achievement. As the title of the 1951 film A Place in the Sun, about the idle rich and dubious morals, the term was used ironically.