Bacán
Great, cool, brilliant — the Chilean stamp of approval.
Related lesson: Chilean Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
¡Qué bacán tu depa!
Your flat is awesome!
Lo pasamos bacán en Valparaíso.
We had a brilliant time in Valparaíso.
Bacán, nos vemos el viernes entonces.
Cool, see you Friday then.
What It Actually Means
Bacán is Chile’s everyday “cool” — applied to plans, places, people and news. It is enthusiastic without being childish, and it belongs to every generation currently alive, which is rarer among slang than you’d think.
Where It Comes From
It travelled: the word appears in Río de la Plata lunfardo of the early 1900s meaning a rich man or a kept woman’s benefactor, probably from Genoese baccan (boss, head of household). Chile and Colombia kept it and flipped the sense from “wealthy man” to “excellent” — which is why bacano sounds so familiar to Colombians.
How Natives Use It
As an adjective (“una fiesta bacán”), an exclamation (“¡bacán!”), and adverbially with pasarlo. Its neighbours in the same slot are la raja (stronger, more vulgar), filete (excellent, slightly dated) and la zorra (very informal).
Common Pitfall
Invariable in the singular — bacán for both genders — but you will hear bacanes in the plural. And keep it inside the Southern Cone and Colombia: in Spain the word to reach for is guay, in Mexico chido.