levy X at

[Laurence Horn]

There's a bunch for "levy criticism on" too (a couple dozen actual
hits), which evokes the pattern of "levy taxes on".  There are no
hits at all for "level barbs on", and the number of hits for "level
criticism on" is not significantly higher than that for "levy
criticism on", which suggests to me that the 'wrongly used for
_level_' vector may not be all that robust for the "on" variety, or
at least that the role of "levy taxes on" in a Cohenian syntactic
blend may be a factor.

LH

At 6:10 AM -0700 3/20/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>while searching for something completely different, I came across this
>instance of "levy barbs at", which struck me as odd:
>
>   After Jon Stewart skewered CNBC's Jim Cramer on Monday night's
>Daily Show, Cramer had to defend himself-and levy some barbs at Stewart
>-on the Today Show as well as MSNBC's Morning Joe yesterday.
>   http://gothamist.com/2009/03/11/stewart_takes_on_cramer_after_crame.php
>
>i wasn't able to find any more examples of "levy ... barbs at" beyond
>this one.  but i did find 35 examples of "levy criticism at" people or
>things, among them:
>
>   It's simple to sit here 25 years later and levy criticism at Reagan.
>   commenter on: http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/004256.html
>
>   "If they had sat back over the last few years and done nothing,
>then perhaps you could levy criticism at them," said Gorol.
>   http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/7614027.stm
>
>   Besides making it fashionable to levy criticism at events like the
>All-Star game before they even occur the culture of negativity has in
>and of itself created a severe images problems for the NHL.
>   http://www.capsblueline.com/category/all-star-game/
>
>the OED to the rescue!  under the verb "levy", we find:
>
>   7. Wrongly used for level v.
>
>two 17th-century cites here, but this use is clearly still alive.
>
>arnold
>
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