Learn Italian: L'attesa per il volo è stata lunghissima. - The wait for the flight was very long.

L'attesa per il volo è stata lunghissima.

The wait for the flight was very long.

Breakdown of L'attesa per il volo è stata lunghissima.

essere

to be

per

for / in order to / because of

Questions & Answers about L'attesa per il volo è stata lunghissima.

Why is there an 'h' in lunghissima?

The base adjective is lunga (long). To add the -issima suffix, you drop the final vowel. However, if we just added -issima to lung-, the 'g' followed by 'i' would make a soft sound (like the 'g' in 'gelato'). We insert the 'h' to keep the hard 'g' sound of the original word.

Why does lunghissima end in -a rather than -o?

Adjectives with the -issimo ending still have to match the noun they describe in gender and number. Here, it describes l'attesa (the wait), which is a feminine singular noun, so the absolute superlative must also end in -a.

Why is it è stata and not è stato?

In the past tense, when a verb uses essere (to be) as its helper verb, the past participle at the end has to agree with the subject. The subject is the feminine noun l'attesa, so stato changes to match it, becoming stata.

Is attesa a verb in this sentence?

No, here it is used as a noun meaning 'the wait'. You can tell because it has the definite article l' (the) attached to the front of it. It comes from the verb attendere (to wait).