Originally posted by alohadave Because bokeh isn't the term for 'out of focus'.
I never said it was.
The term for "out of focus" is "pinboke(h)" (ピンボケ)....which is a contracted was of saying ピント合わせがボケている (pintoawase is the term for "focus" and the rest, including the "boke(h)" part means.....blurry, bleary, smeared, fuzzy)
Quote: It describes the pleasant aspects of out of focus areas in photographs.
In English it does.
In Japanese the "pleasant" qualifier is not inherent, nor is the term specific to photography. English has borrowed the term and narrowed its definition and usage (a process I often see in reverse with words borrowed from English into Japanese).
It can be said of people who are displaying senility that they are "bokete iru". And the term "jisaboke" (jisa meaning "time difference") is the Japanese term for the phenomenon known as "jet lag" in English. And that confused feeling you may have in the morning immediately upon rising from your bed and stumbling around with your body awake and your brain half-asleep still is called "neboke" ("ne" meaning "sleep).
So it isn't as though the Japanese had some special photography-specific term that described the phenomenon.....it was just that when the word got borrowed into English it had the advantage of nobody knowing its original, wider usage. So that old "The XXXXXese have a word for it......" stuff went to work again.