Extremely beautiful, nearly always said of a woman. The adjectival drop-dead has been used in a number of contexts since about 1970; alone it means dazzling or awe-inspiring and thus can be applied to decor, clothing, illustrations, and so on. Haruki Murakami had the first usage in the story “Folklore for My Generation”: “She . . . was one of a handful of girls who were drop-dead gorgeous” (trans. Alfred Birnbaum, 2006).