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Passei o dia inteiro à espera.

Passei o dia inteiro à espera.
I spent the whole day waiting.
From Lesson 453:Qualidades e avaliação (excelente, esgotado)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of Passei o dia inteiro à espera.

passar
to pass
o dia
the day
a espera
the wait
inteiro
whole, entire

Questions & Answers about Passei o dia inteiro à espera.

Why do we use passei here instead of gastei for the English word "spent"?
In Portuguese, you must use the verb passar when talking about spending time. The verb gastar is strictly reserved for spending money or physically consuming resources, like fuel or battery life.
Why does the sentence use the noun phrase à espera instead of a continuous verb form like a esperar?
While you can grammatically say a esperar to mean "waiting" in a continuous sense, the phrase à espera (literally "at the wait") is a very common fixed expression in European Portuguese. It sounds extremely natural after verbs like passar, estar, and ficar to describe the state of waiting.
Could I say o dia todo instead of o dia inteiro in this sentence?
Yes, o dia todo and o dia inteiro are completely interchangeable here and both mean "the whole day". Just be careful not to confuse them with the plural phrase todos os dias, which means "every day".
Since the verb esperar means to wait, hope, or expect, does the noun espera also share all those meanings?
No. While the verb has multiple meanings, the noun espera is only used for the physical act of waiting. If you wanted to talk about hope, you would use the noun esperança, and for an expectation, you would use expectativa.

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