Words we love: flabbergasted (thanks Celebrity Traitors!)

I’ll be honest - flabbergasted isn’t a word I reach for often.

But recently, the BBC's Celebrity Traitors put it back on my radar. Kate Garraway exclaimed it in reaction to the traitor’s first murder, and it made quite the impression on Tom Daley.

“Who even uses that word?” he said.

“You can’t just call someone a Traitor because they have a better vocabulary than you.” Fellow competitor, Alan Carr quipped back.

But Tom was unmoved. Kate was marked.

And when a single word gets this much airtime, it’s worth digging into a little more.

What I learnt after a quick Google is that flabbergasted doesn’t have some grand origin story. No Latin roots. No borrowed French. It simply popped up in English in the late 18th century and stuck around because it sounded good.

It goes beyond simple surprise. It’s the kind of word you use when something really takes you off guard, a plot twist, an unexpected reply, a result you didn’t see coming.

If you’re going to use flabbergasted, you’ve got to go full Garraway-esque. You’ve got to commit. It’s not a whispery word. It’s a headline word - and completely over the top.

And honestly, if you were ever looking for the perfect moment to use flabbergasted, a fake celebrity murder in a stately home in the Highlands is it.