No. 455 in Italian
stava
"Stava" means "was" or "was staying," used as the third person singular imperfect tense of "stare."
In a sentence
Maria stava leggendo un libro quando il telefono ha squillato.
Maria was reading a book when the phone rang.
In this sentence, 'stava' is used as an auxiliary verb in the past continuous tense, indicating an action 'reading a book' that was ongoing when another action 'the phone rang' occurred.
Non capivo cosa stava dicendo durante la riunione.
I couldn't understand what she was saying during the meeting.
Here, 'stava' introduces an ongoing action 'was saying' in the past to set up a background for the difficulty in understanding.
Luca stava per uscire quando si è ricordato di dover fare una telefonata.
Luca was about to go out when he remembered he had to make a phone call.
In this context, 'stava' is used in the construction 'stava per', expressing an imminent action 'was about to go out' that was interrupted by another event.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “stava” in actual Italian podcasts.
Find “stava” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Italian podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into italiano, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Italian books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).