vacilando

Vacilando is the gerund of the Spanish verb vacilar, which in everyday Spanish covers several related ideas. The core sense is to hesitate or vacillate, making indecisive or wavering decisions. Etymologically, vacilar comes from Latin vacillare, and the form vacilando preserves the sense of ongoing motion or action.

In standard usage, vacilar primarily means to hesitate or to be indecisive when choosing a course of action. In many dialects, especially across Latin America, it can also carry a lighter, more playful sense: to tease, joke around, or goof off with someone. In some regional slang, it can imply deceiving or fooling someone, though this pejorative sense is less common in the gerund form.

The exact nuance of vacilando depends on dialect, context, and tone. It generally conveys motion or activity that is not fixed or serious—an ongoing state of dipping in and out of decisions, plans, or routines. As a present participle, vacilando describes an action in progress: for example, someone who is vacilando through life is taking things slowly, being indecisive, or simply idling with a sense of playfulness rather than urgency.

Culturally, vacilando has appeared in travel writing and contemporary slang to evoke a lifestyle of wandering, improvisation, and relaxed exploration rather than rigid goals. It is a colloquial term whose meaning is fluid and regionally nuanced, rather than a formal, universally fixed expression.