Standard Lemma guide

bokeh

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

  • UK: /ˈbəʊ.kə/
  • UK: /ˈbəʊˌkeɪ/
  • Australian, US: /ˈboʊ.kə/
  • Australian, US: /ˈboʊˌkeɪ/
  • Australia: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.

1

noun

Meaning 1

A subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable, usually

Topics: arts, hobbies, lifestyle, photography

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Japanese 暈(ぼ)け (boke, “blur”), the nominalized form of 暈(ぼ)ける (bokeru, “to blur”). The terminal -h, absent in the romanization boke, is a pronunciation guide so that it is not pronounced as /boʊk/ as it would be under standard English orthography. Contrast karate and karaoke, which have undergone sound changes. The term has been used since at least 1996, with the spelling bokeh introduced by editor Mike Johnston in the March–April 1997 issue of Photo Techniques magazine, Johnston writing “it is properly pronounced with bo as in bone and ke as in Kenneth, with equal stress on either syllable”.

Across languages

Translations

37 source translations are retained for this English entry.

  • Arabic: بوكيه — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Armenian: բոկե (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Bulgarian: боке (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Catalan: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Chinese Mandarin: 散景 (sǎnjǐng) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Czech: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Danish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Dutch: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Esperanto: bokeo — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Finnish: boke — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • French: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Galician: boke — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • German: Bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Hebrew: בוקה — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Hungarian: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Indonesian: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Italian: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Japanese: ボケ (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Korean: 보케 (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Limburgish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Luxembourgish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Malayalam: ബൊക്കെ (bokke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Marathi: बोके (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Norwegian: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Persian: بوکه — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Polish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Portuguese: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Russian: боке (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Serbo-Croatian: бокеx — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Slovak: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Slovene: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Spanish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Swedish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Tamil: போக்கா (pōkkā) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Turkish: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Ukrainian: боке (boke) — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
  • Vietnamese: bokeh — subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image