In case you missed it earlier… OED Word of the Day: z-list, n. and adj.: http://t.co/p3aqt731
— The OED (@OED) December 5, 2011
Our earliest recorded example of the noun 'Z-list' is from the @WashingtonPost in 1979. ˈZ-lister': 1999 in @TheSundayMirror.
— The OED (@OED) September 26, 2013
Fa capo al giornalista James Ulmer l’idea di un listing dei gradi della celebrità redatto attraverso la sequenza dei caratteri alfabetici, ed ecco, a proposito della scala Ulmer, la sintesi in Wikipedia:
In popular usage outside the film industry, an “A-list celebrity” simply refers to any person with an admired or desirable social status.[4] In recent times, the term has given rise to any person, regardless of profession, in the limelight. Even socialites with popular press coverage have been termed as “A-list” celebrities. Similarly, less popular persons and current teen idols are referred to as “B-list – and the ones with lesser fame “C-list”. Entertainment Weekly interpreted C-list celebrity as “that guy (or sometimes that girl), the easy-to-remember but hard-to-name character actor”.
“D-list” is the lowest rating on the Ulmer Scale, and it is often used to describe persons whose celebrity is so obscure that they are generally only known for appearances as so-called celebrities on panel game shows and reality television. Kathy Griffin, a comedian who became widely known for her frequent appearances on such programs, uses the term in a tongue-in-cheek manner for her TV series Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. Alternatively successive letters of the alphabet beyond D, such as “E-list” or “Z-list” are used for exaggeration or comic effect, but effectively have the same meaning as D-list.
Come si legge, è sufficiente essere nella D-list per essere già “ultimi”.
Tuttavia la declinazione dell’idea in chiave estrema, anche comica, ha dato origine all’espressione inglese Z-list, registrata nell’Oxford English Dictionary.
Essere un Z-lister equivale a dire “signor nessuno” o qualcosa del genere.
Sappiamo che la zeta è l’ultima lettera del lungo elenco del nostro alfabeto. In italiano essa non ha avuto esitazione a cedere il posto alle lettere di provenienza straniera.
Basterebbe D-list per dire “non sei nessuno”, ma se si deve sperimentare il rango degli ultimi è bello farlo a testa alta.
Z-list è l’occasione giusta per noi per dire “Z: Che carattere!”
Francesca Chiusaroli, Scritture Brevi
28 settembre 2013
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