The Columnist Manifesto

I'd always assumed the word "potrzebie" was pronounced "potter-zee-bee," and this morning the word just popped into my head, along with this definition:

Read something other than Harry Potter, for god's sake! I don't know, read Mad Magazine!

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Potrzebie:

Potrzebie is a seemingly nonsensical word (actually Polish), popularized by its use as a running gag in the early issues of Mad not long after the comic book began in 1952. The word is pronounced "po-TSCHEB-yeh" in Polish and means "as needed" or "as necessary"....

Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman spotted the word printed in the Polish language section of a multi-languaged "Instructions for Use" sheet accompanying a bottle of aspirin, and Kurtzman decided it would make an appropriate non sequitur.

poTSCHEByeh. poTSCHEByeh. Sorry, Nina.

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