bacano

What it means

1. 1.

   Great, cool, enjoyable. The safe all-purpose compliment in Colombian Spanish — usable in front of your in-laws, which is exactly what distinguishes it from chimba.

2. 2.

   Of a person: easy-going, decent, good company. 'Es muy bacano' is a character reference, not a comment on style.

Examples with translations

• El plan está bacano, yo me le mido.

  The plan sounds great, I'm in.

• Conocí al papá de Laura y es un tipo bacano.

  I met Laura's dad and he's a really decent guy.

  Note: The 'good sort' sense — nothing to do with being fashionable.

• Qué bacano que hayas venido.

  It's so good that you came.

Where it comes from

Related to bacán, which travelled through the Río de la Plata in the early twentieth century meaning a man who keeps a woman, and is usually traced from there to Genoese bacan, 'master of the house'. The route into Colombia is not documented and the semantic jump to 'enjoyable' happened locally; treat any confident single-source origin story as speculation.

First attested: mid-20th century

Other forms

Spellings and variants:

bacana, bacanísimo

Similar terms:

bacán, chévere, una nota