Wal-Marted

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 13:08:06 EDT, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

>Too obvious a coinage, for this to have been the first usage, but i don't
>recall having seen it before.
>
>"US Airways got Wal-Marted" by Jeff Gelles in the "Consumer Watch" column,
>Philadelphia Inquirer, September 18, 2004, page D1

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New York Times, May 5, 1990, p. 8
Not many years ago, this was one of those close-knit, self-contained,
all-American small towns, sheltered to an extent from the corrosive winds
of modernity by the great pine forests that circumscribe it. But by its
earnestness, it made it way at last into the mainstream. And now it has
been strip-developed, subdivisioned, Wal-Marted and fast-fooded into a
conventional white suburban middle-class calling-itself-Protestant-still
community with only a faint fading identity.
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Industry Week, Jun 3, 1991, p. 20
I recently spoke to a friend about Wal-Mart, an organization I greatly
admire. I contended, counter to conventional wisdom, that Wal-Mart is at
risk. It's phenomenally good at what it does. But, I wondered aloud, "Is
there any reason to believe that there's not a nouveau Wal-Mart out there
somewhere (looking back a decade, how more 'somewhere' can you get than
Bentonville, Ark.?), who's going to Wal-Mart Wal-Mart the same way
Wal-Mart has Wal-Marted Sears?"
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--Ben Zimmer