Besides describing habits, the imperfeito expresses an action that was in progress at some past moment — the meaning English carries with "was doing." This is the imperfect of the unfinished, mid-stream action: not "I read the paper" (done) but "I was reading the paper" (in the middle of it) when something else happened.
The core meaning: an action caught mid-stream
The imperfect freezes an action in the middle, with no view of its beginning or end. That is exactly what English "was/were + -ing" does. When you want to describe what was already underway, the simple imperfect does the job.
Eu lia o jornal quando ela chegou.
I was reading the paper when she arrived.
A gente conversava sobre você bem nessa hora.
We were talking about you right at that moment.
Notice that English forces the progressive here ("was reading," "were talking") — you cannot say "I read the paper when she arrived" with the same meaning. Portuguese, by contrast, is perfectly happy with the simple imperfect lia. The "in-progress" sense is already built into the tense.
The interruption pattern: imperfect sets the scene, preterite cuts in
The most important structure to internalize is the interruption: an ongoing action in the imperfect is interrupted by a sudden, discrete event in the preterite (pretérito perfeito). Think of it as a long line (the imperfect) crossed by a short stroke (the preterite).
Estava chovendo quando saí de casa.
It was raining when I left the house.
Eu dormia tranquilamente quando o telefone tocou.
I was sleeping peacefully when the phone rang.
Eles jantavam quando a luz acabou.
They were having dinner when the power went out.
In each case, the imperfect verb (estava, dormia, jantavam) is the backdrop already underway, and the preterite verb (saí, tocou, acabou) is the single event that breaks into it. This pairing is so fundamental that it gets its own page: the interrupting preterite.
Two parallel ongoing actions
When two actions were both unfolding at the same time, both go in the imperfect. There is no interruption — just two parallel lines running together. The connector is usually enquanto ("while").
Enquanto eu cozinhava, ele arrumava a mesa.
While I was cooking, he was setting the table.
As crianças brincavam no quintal enquanto os adultos conversavam.
The kids were playing in the yard while the adults talked.
Because neither action is bounded, neither one "wins" — they coexist. English again leans on the progressive ("was cooking," "was setting"), but Portuguese is content with the simple imperfect.
The explicit progressive: estava + gerúndio
Brazilian Portuguese also has a dedicated past-progressive form built from the imperfect of estar plus the gerund: estava + -ndo. This is the literal mirror of English "was doing." So for "I was reading," Brazilians can say either:
- Eu lia (simple imperfect), or
- Eu estava lendo (estava + gerúndio).
Eu estava lendo quando ela chegou.
I was reading when she arrived.
Estava chovendo forte quando a gente saiu.
It was raining hard when we left.
The two are very nearly synonymous, but there is a subtle difference in emphasis: estava lendo foregrounds the ongoingness — the fact that the action was actively in motion at that instant — slightly more than the bare lia. In real Brazilian speech, the estava + gerúndio form is extremely common and often the more natural-sounding choice, especially when you want to stress that something was right in the middle of happening. The simple imperfect, however, is never wrong and is more economical. For the full conjugation and use of this construction, see estava + gerúndio.
Ongoing state vs. ongoing action
The imperfect covers not only ongoing actions but also ongoing states in the past — what something was like at a given moment. With state verbs (estar, ser, ter, querer, saber), the estava + gerúndio form is usually unavailable or awkward, so the simple imperfect is the only option.
Ela estava nervosa porque o resultado saía naquele dia.
She was nervous because the result was coming out that day.
Eu não sabia que você morava aqui.
I didn't know you lived here.
You would never say ela estava estando nervosa — states simply take the plain imperfect. This overlaps with the imperfect's role in background description, where setting the scene of a past moment is the whole point.
A note for English speakers
English has a strict habit: an action in progress must take the progressive ("I was eating"), and the simple past ("I ate") cannot mean "was eating." Portuguese is looser. The simple imperfect (eu comia) already means "I was eating," so the gerund form is optional, not obligatory. English speakers tend to over-reach for estava + gerúndio because it feels like a one-to-one match with their native grammar — and while that is never wrong, it is worth getting comfortable with the leaner comia / lia / dormia as well, which is what you will read most often in Brazilian books and journalism.
Common Mistakes
❌ Eu li o jornal quando ela chegou.
Incorrect — preterite 'li' means the reading was a completed event, losing the 'in-progress' sense.
✅ Eu lia o jornal quando ela chegou.
I was reading the paper when she arrived.
❌ Choveu quando eu saí de casa.
Usually wrong for the intended meaning — this says 'it rained' as a completed event, not 'was raining' as a backdrop.
✅ Estava chovendo quando eu saí de casa.
It was raining when I left the house.
❌ Enquanto eu cozinhei, ele arrumou a mesa.
Incorrect — two simultaneous ongoing actions should both be imperfect, not preterite.
✅ Enquanto eu cozinhava, ele arrumava a mesa.
While I was cooking, he was setting the table.
❌ Eu estava sabendo a resposta.
Incorrect — state verbs like 'saber' take the simple imperfect, not the gerund form.
✅ Eu sabia a resposta.
I knew the answer.
Key Takeaways
- The imperfect expresses an action in progress in the past — the meaning of English "was doing."
- The signature pattern is interruption: imperfect (ongoing) + quando
- preterite (the event that cuts in).
- Two simultaneous ongoing actions both take the imperfect, usually joined by enquanto.
- Brazil also has estava + gerúndio (estava lendo), nearly synonymous with the simple imperfect but slightly more vivid about ongoingness.
- State verbs (saber, ter, estar) take only the simple imperfect, never the gerund form.
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Start learning Portuguese→Related Topics
- Pretérito Imperfeito OverviewA2 — An introduction to the pretérito imperfeito — Brazilian Portuguese's tense for ongoing, habitual, and background past events.
- Imperfeito for Habitual PastA2 — Using the imperfect to express what used to happen — repeated, habitual, or customary actions in the past.
- Imperfeito for Background DescriptionA2 — Using the imperfect to set the scene in a past narrative — describing settings, conditions, and states.
- Estava + Gerúndio: Past ProgressiveA2 — Building the past progressive with the imperfect of estar plus the gerund, and choosing between estava comendo and the plain imperfect comia.
- Imperfeito + Perfeito: Interrupting ActionsA2 — The classic narrative pattern where the imperfeito sets an ongoing scene and the perfeito drops in the event that interrupts it.
- Pretérito Perfeito for Completed ActionsA1 — The core use of the Brazilian pretérito perfeito for finished, time-bounded past actions — and why English 'I have done' almost always maps to it, not to 'tenho feito'.