Gorgeous means strikingly beautiful or magnificent. When something is gorgeous, it catches your attention and makes you stop and stare. A gorgeous sunset might paint the sky with brilliant oranges and purples that take your breath away. A gorgeous dress sparkles and flows in a way that makes everyone turn to look.

The word carries more intensity than simply calling something pretty or nice. A flower might be pretty, but a whole field of wildflowers stretching to the horizon is gorgeous. A room might look nice, but a grand library with floor-to-ceiling books, spiral staircases, and sunlight streaming through stained glass windows is gorgeous.

You can use gorgeous to describe anything impressively beautiful: gorgeous weather, a gorgeous voice, gorgeous architecture, or even a gorgeously written sentence in a book. Some people use it more casually, like calling a slice of chocolate cake gorgeous, but the word works best when describing something truly spectacular. When you call something gorgeous, you're saying it's good-looking and genuinely stunning in a way that's hard to ignore.