I thought it best to ....

Yogi2005hello,

Please , could you explain what part of speech 'best' is in the sentence below?

I thought it best to do ...

Is it an idiomatic or fixed phrase ? How to analyze the sentence form grammatical point of view?

thank you in advance

thought (transitive verb) + it (false object

What part of speech? "best" is an adjective.

CJ

thank you for your help.

I have one more question.

Is it so , that "was" is omitted in the sentence "I thought it best to do..", i.e. the sentence might sound "I thought it was best to do .."? or is it a fixed phrase?

thank you

Hello

<S think O C> and <S think that S' be C> may be correlated like below.
He thought her pretty = He thought (that) she was pretty.
I thought it best to do so = I thought (that) to do so was best.
I think, however, we'd better understand the construction <S think O C> is a fixed phrase, different from <S think O C

Hi,

Paco, I appreciate your help but I'm little confused by the sentence:

I think, however, we'd better understand the construction <S think O C> is a fixed phrase, different from <S think O C>.

Could you paraphrase it?

I would also like to know if

I thought it best to do sth = I thought it

Hello Yogi

I'm sorry!I have a mistake in editing my writing. I should have written "we'd better understand the construction <S think O C> is a fixed phrase, different from <S think that S' be C>".

As I said, "He thought her pretty" <S think O C> and "He thought she was pretty <S think that S' be C> are almost the same in the

thank you paco,

one more question,

do you happen to know if there are any other verbs that go according to the same pattern (as 'think')?

thank you

Hello Yogi

The one that comes up to me right now is "I find it impossible to believe her". We may say also "I find it is impossible to believe her".

paco