Explosion protection

The eighth entry is la classificazione in zone, and the noun inside it carries a trap that shows up only away from the standard. On paper the two languages agree: a zona and a « zone » are both a bounded stretch of ground, and this list numbers them exactly as an English document would. Off the paperwork they part company. English has taken « zone » inside the head. To be « in the zone » is to be absorbed, working at one’s best without effort, and to « zone out » is to stop attending altogether — two idioms pointing in opposite directions, neither of them about a place. Italian keeps the word on the map. Abito qui in zona means I live nearby, c’è una farmacia in zona means there is one round the corner, and that is as figurative as it gets. The one flight Italian allows itself is borrowed from football: in zona Cesarini, after a player whose goals arrived in the closing seconds, means at the very last moment. It is a deadline, never a frame of mind, and nothing in this list is ever in zona in the English sense.