Levying violence

[Victor Steinbok]

Eggcorn from use with taxes?

 From Wiki--Income Tax:
"An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or business
(corporations or other legal entities)."

 From Wiki--Tax:
"In modern taxation systems, taxes are levied in money, but in-kind and
corvée taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist
states and their functional equivalents."

So there may be some confusion here between "level", "levy" and "lay".

     VS-)

On 3/23/2010 1:22 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
> > From a sad news story about a child killed by an abusive stepfather:
>
> "No one could have anticipated that this kind of violence would have been
> levied on this child."
>
> Violence levied? I've heard of taxes being levied, and sometimes bank
> charges, but not violence. I've also heard of charges and accusations being
> leveled, which I take to be a metaphorical extension of leveling (i.e.
> aiming) a gun at someone. Is there some combined phonetic and semantic
> blending going on here, such that undesirable things are levied on people?
>
> OED has a definition of "levy" as "wrongly used for LEVEL", but attestations
> only from 1600s.
> a1634 RANDOLPH De Histrice 2 Poems (1638) 26 Fam'd Stymphall, I have heard,
> thy birds in flight Shoot showers of arrowes forth all levied right.
>
> Earliest hit in GNA, 1994: "Rooney touted his agenda against all violence
> levied at and between children, as well as his ability to help bring state
> money to the 133rd."
> http://news.google.com/archivesearch?as_user_ldate=1900&as_user_hdate=2009&q=%22violence+levied%22&scoring=a&hl=en&ned=us&um=1&q=%22violence+levied%22&lnav=od&btnG=Go
>
> Neal
>

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