Potrzebie

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Mr. Hulot's Holiday
. The issue is dated June 1954, the same month the 1953 Tati film had a U.S. release.

Potrzebie (

Mad
not long after the comic book began in 1952.

Origin

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. Kurtzman, who was fascinated with unusual words, decided it would make an appropriate but meaningless background gag. After cutting the word out of the instruction sheet, he made copies and used rubber cement to paste "Potrzebie" randomly into the middle of Mad satires.

Appearances

Potrzebie was first used in a story in Mad #11 (May 1954), where it was the exclamation of a character who spoke only in foreign languages and song lyrics, in "Murder the Story", a parody illustrated by

hackers
.

Fourth appearance of the word in Jack Davis's "Book! Movie!" (Mad #13)

A typical appearance of the word is exemplified by the Mad version of

Canterbury Tales
(from Mad #43, December 1958), which begins:

"Whon thot Aprille swithin potrzebie,
"The burgid prillie gives one heebie-jeebie.

System of measurement

In issue 33, Mad published a partial table of the "Potrzebie System of Weights and

Donald E. Knuth, later a famed computer scientist. According to Knuth, the basis of this new revolutionary system is the potrzebie, which equals the thickness of Mad issue 26, or 2.2633484517438173216473 mm,[2] although the eighth digit was mistakenly dropped and the thickness appeared as 2.263348517438173216473 mm in the MAD article. A standardization in terms of the wavelength of the red line of the emission spectrum of cadmium is also given, which if the 1927 definition of the Ångstrom is taken for the value of that wavelength, would equal 2.263347539605392 mm.[3]

Volume was measured in ngogn (equal to 1000 cubic potrzebies), mass in

cowznofski, vreeble, hoo and hah
.

According to the "Date" system in Knuth's article, which substitutes a 10-clarke "

cowznofski", for a year, the date of October 29, 2007, was originally rendered as "Cal 7, 201 C.M." (for Cowznofsko Madi, or "in the Cowznofski of MAD"). The dates are calculated from October 1, 1952, the date MAD was first published. Dates before this point are referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as "B.M." ("Before MAD.") Later Knuth preferred 0-origin indexing,[4]
so October 29, 2007 is now rendered as "Cal 6, 201 C.D." (for Cowznofsko Dimentii, with "mad" also translated into Latin). The ten "Mingoes" are: Tales (Tal.) Calculated (Cal.) To (To) Drive (Dri.) You (You) Humor (Hum.) In (In) A (A) Jugular (Jug.) Vein (Vei.)

Google Calculator and WolframAlpha can both perform conversions from the potrzebie system to other units.[5][6] WolframAlpha uses the originally printed value of a potrzebie, while Google Calculator appears to use a value rounded to 5 significant figures.[7][8]
As such, the two sites may not compute identical results.

See also

Wiktionary: furshlugginer

References

  1. ^ Bedside Mad. E.C. Publications, New York, 1959, p173
  2. ^ Knuth, Donald E. (2011). "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures (addendum to chapter 1, a reprint of the MAD article)". Selected Papers on Fun & Games.
  3. ^ "DONALD KNUTH - The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures". Webofstories.com. 2008-01-24. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
  4. ^ Knuth, Donald E. (2011). "The Revolutionary Potrzebie (addendum to chapter 3, a reprint of an Engineering and Science Review article)". Selected Papers on Fun & Games.
  5. ^ 26 potrzebie / 0.31416 ngogn = 0.0161561625 kilometers per liter (retrieved February 26, 2024)
  6. ^ 26 potrzebie / 0.31416 ngogn = 16155.5 m-2 (reciprocal square meters) (retrieved February 26, 2024)
  7. ^ 1 potrzebie / 2.263348517438173216473 mm = 1 (retrieved February 26, 2024)
  8. ^ 1 potrzebie / 2.2633 mm = 1 (retrieved February 26, 2024)

External links

Look up potrzebie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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