Likely from Old French 'gorgias' (elegant), possibly from 'gorge' (throat) — originally about stylish neck adornments.
Beautiful and very attractive; strikingly magnificent.
From Old French "gorgias" meaning "elegant, fashionable, fine," a word of uncertain ultimate origin but likely connected to Old French "gorge" (throat, bosom), from Late Latin "gurga" (throat, gullet), from Latin "gurges" (whirlpool, abyss), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷerh₃- (to swallow, to devour). The semantic path from "throat" to "elegant" likely passed through the notion of a fashionable collar or wimple adorning the throat — medieval neckwear being a primary marker of wealth and status. Some scholars alternatively connect "gorgias" to the name of the ancient Greek rhetorician Gorgias of Leontini, famed
If 'gorgeous' really does connect to the Gorgons — snake-haired monsters so terrifying that looking at them turned you to stone — then calling someone 'gorgeous' is etymologically calling them so striking that the sight of them stops you dead. The compliment conceals a myth about petrification.