bokeh
Syllables: bo·kehUK/ˈbəʊ.kə//ˈboʊ.kə/
bokeh noun: a subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens.
Noun
bokeh (usually uncountable, plural bokehs)
- A subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens.
- The quality of the out-of-focus area in a wide-aperture image is called bokeh, originally from the Japanese word boke, pronounced bo-keh, which means fuzzy. In photography, bokeh reflects the shape and number of diaphragm blades in the lens, and that determines, in part, the way that out-of-focus...2010, Charlotte K. Lowrie, “Exploring Canon Lenses and Accessories”, in Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D Digital Field Guide, Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 186
- Shooting with natural light, I used a long lens (200mm) to compress the space and slightly blur the background by photographing at a large open aperture (f/2.5). This resulted in gorgeous bokeh, putting the city into a blur while keeping the couple razor sharp.2014, Bob Davis, Dawn Davis, “Blackhawks Fans: The Back Story, Posing, Lighting and Lens Selection, Colleagues”, in We’re Engaged!: Photographing Vibrant and Joyful Portraits of the Happy Couple...
bokeh meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam and Arabic
bokeh in Tamil
- subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
- போக்கா pōkkā
bokeh in Marathi
- subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
- बोके boke
bokeh in Malayalam
- subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
- ബൊക്കെ bokke
bokeh in Arabic
- subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image
- بوكيه
More languagesFewer languages
- bokeh in Indonesian
- bokeh
- bokeh in Persian
- بوکه
- bokeh in Vietnamese
- bokeh
Examples of bokeh in a sentence
- The quality of the out-of-focus area in a wide-aperture image is called bokeh, originally from the Japanese word boke, pronounced bo-keh, which means fuzzy.2010, Charlotte K. Lowrie, “Exploring Canon Lenses and Accessories”, in Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D Digital Field Guide, Indianapolis, Ind....
- More expensive lenses usually go down to f/2.8, letting you shoot at faster shutter speeds and get great, creamy bokeh in your background.2014, Krista Smith, “What You Need”, in The Right Light: Photographing Children and Families Using Natural Light, Buffalo, N.Y.: Amherst...
Forms of bokeh
| plural | bokehs |
|---|---|
| alternative form | boke |
Origin of bokeh
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”.
Questions about bokeh
- What does bokeh mean?
- Bokeh means a subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens.
- What is bokeh in Tamil?
- Bokeh in Tamil is போக்கா (pōkkā). See Bokeh meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use bokeh in a sentence?
- The quality of the out-of-focus area in a wide-aperture image is called bokeh, originally from the Japanese word boke, pronounced bo-keh, which means fuzzy.
- What part of speech is bokeh?
- Bokeh is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bokeh?
- Bokeh is pronounced /ˈbəʊ.kə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of bokeh?
- The plural of bokeh is bokehs.
Words near bokeh in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bokeh (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bokeh.ogg, En-us-bokeh.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bokeh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bokeh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.