The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
BOKEH
Definition of BOKEH
noun
A subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
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”.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Japanese
- English
One recorded step before English.
Deepest traced root
17th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
0.6%
of traced words share this origin (185)
branch · 0.6% of traced words
How it is built
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
BOKEH in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 39 boards so far. 148 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 9, 29 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 153, 20 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 1 day.
First found by a player on Day 9, 29 May 2026.
Built from these letters
BOKEH starts with B and ends with H. Sorted, its letters read BEHKO - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Also seen on Day 9
Could you have found BOKEH?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 9 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER