Bokeh is not defined by how much blur there is. It refers to the character or quality of out-of-focus areas rendered by a lens.

So an image can have very little blur and still show pleasing bokeh, or it can have heavy blur with unattractive bokeh. In other words, “out of focus” describes the condition; “bokeh” describes how that blur looks.

Photographers often talk about good or bad bokeh based on whether the blur appears smooth, harsh, distracting, nervous, etc. If there are point light sources in the background, they may appear as blurred discs, which are often associated with bokeh, but those discs are not required for bokeh to exist.

Intentionality is not the key distinction either. A background doesn’t become bokeh only when blur was deliberate, and there isn’t a strict threshold where recognizable detail suddenly becomes “bokeh.”

In short: all bokeh is out-of-focus rendering, but not all discussion of out-of-focus blur is really about bokeh unless you’re talking about its visual quality.