Well, I could be wrong, but I believe 暈け (boke) literally means "blur," "dull," or "fuzzy." However, I think this may have the more casual context such as "it was all a blur," "your charisma is so dull," or "my memory is a little fuzzy right now."
Apparently, the term "bokeh" with the 'h' was popularized in the U.S. by a
Photo Techniques (PT) magazine article. According to Mike Johnston, author of the LL article, editor of TOP, and editor of the mentioned PT article, he simply added the "h" to help English speakers with the pronunciation because people were pronouncing "boke," the original romanization of the word, as if it rhymed with "joke" or "coke."
According to
another article by Mike Johnston from TOP blog,
"as a photographic term it (bokeh) simply refers to the blur of objects out of the depth of field. I've been told that photographic blur would most likely be referred to as "bokeh-aji," which literally means "taste of blur."