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What's the difference between "thought of" and "thought about"? One difference I'm aware of is that you use "thought of" when something comes to mind but you don't analyze it, and "thought about" if you analyze it. Are there any other differences?

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  • possible duplicate of Difference between "think of" and "think about" But more appropriately, it's also been covered on English Language Learners by “Think of” versus “think about”
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 13:44
  • I knew I'd seen one. But I couldn't find it. Now why did you remember it?
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 13:53
  • @Edwin: I didn't. But basic questions like this are always turning up on ELU - and since I think they should be on ELL anyway, I usually do a "site-specific" Google search when I see something so trivial here. The search site:english.stackexchange.com "think of" "think about" finds three such questions, and "thought of" "thought about" finds another one. But they'd be hard to find using the built-in SE search facility, since it ignores little words like of.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 14:42
  • I used the past tense; it's usually more fruitful on a Google search. Your answer at the dupe was fine.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 26, 2015 at 15:29

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Think about usually connotes a deliberate meditation on something or someone.

I thought about where I would like to go for the holidays.

Have you thought about what she said?

I thought long and hard about what I should do next.

Think of often connotes something occurring to a person.

I saw a field of poppies and thought of that time we had a picnic.

I've thought of a way we might be able to get round the patent.

I never thought of that.

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Another difference is that the frequent idiomatic construct

/highly/well/ thought of

where "well thought off" = [very/quite] respected, appreciated, considered

is never replaced by a similar construct using "about."

And the proof is, of course, according to the principles of statistical and corpus-based grammar as presented in say

Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English by Biber et al.

in the pudding ... at Google Books: :-)

"he was highly thought of" About 13,200 results

*"he was highly thought about" 0 results

where * is, of course, "non-standard, incorrrect."

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