The phenomenon of having a word on the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) is an inherent psychological experience that emerges from an unsuccessful cognitive effort aimed at finding the right word to express a specific thought. From a Vygotskian perspective, this can be understood as a dynamic relationship between psychological processes that evolves over time, especially between thought and language, with these functions at times intersecting and later bifurcatingeven aligning in parallel -during microgenetic human development. Following Vygotsky's postulates, in this article we explore the TOT experience as an episodic gap between thought and language during daily psychological activity. Then, the notion of metacognition in psychology is adjunctly revisited and reviewed. Based on theoretical developments on the notion of feeling-of-knowing, the TOT experience and metacognition are reframed as affective phenomena and the accuracy of the traditional interpretation of metacognition as a cognitive-intellectual monitoring system is put into question. Finally, the article discusses possible contributions the TOT phenomenon and the feeling-of-knowing might offer to educational practices and processes. RESUMENLa sensación de tener una palabra 'en la punta de la lengua' se conoce como fenómeno PDL y es una experiencia inherentemente psicológica que surge de un esfuerzo cognitivo fallido al tratar de encontrar la palabra adecuada para expresar un pensamiento concreto. Desde una perspectiva vygotskiana, esto puede comprenderse como una relación dinámica entre procesos psicológicos que evolucionan a través del tiempo, especialmente entre el pensamiento y lenguaje, ya que dichas funciones se cruzan y luego se bifurcan -incluso llegando a alinearse en paralelo -en el transcurso del desarrollo microgenético.

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