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In The Elements of Style, the authors give this example:

She thought the study of Latin a waste of time.

I cannot understand why the verb is has been omitted. Should not this sentence be as:

She thought the study of Latin is a waste of time.

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  • It should be past tense, to match 'would'.
    – marcellothearcane
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 13:55
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    There is no is left out in that sentence. To the extent that anything is left out, it is an infinitive to be. Adding is (present, so a general truth) or was (past, to match thought) changes the syntactic construction completely. In the original version, the study of Latin is the object of thought and a waste of time is the object complement; in your version, the object of thought is [that] the study of Latin is a waste of time, in which the study of Latin is the subject and a waste of time is the subject complement. Both are valid, but different constructions.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 14:03
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    @JanusBahsJacquet Comments for comments, answers for answers.
    – puppetsock
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 15:04

2 Answers 2

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The word is has not been omitted from the sample sentence. This is an error in analysis.

You’re asking why something that didn’t happen did happen. Your question cannot be directly answered because it includes a false supposition.

Just because a verb has two different arguments beyond the subject doesn’t mean that you need to pretend there is some “missing” word that some “better” writer (or less slovenly, more serious, better educated, more formal, less casual, more careful) would “surely” never have omitted.

This is not a matter of elision, let alone of correctness or respectfulness; rather, it is a matter of syntax. For example, none of these need be rewritten to have any “missing” connective words in them:

  1. The bears found us sound asleep in our tents.
  2. I found their intrusion unsettling.
  3. We’ll just have to find them a new home.
  4. Some prefer their pizza cold.
  5. But I like mine hot.
  6. So the kitchen made me a new pizza.
  7. Nightly pizza made me a fat pig.

In particular, verbs like think, feel, believe, regard, consider, judge, find, leave, hold, expect, suppose, and many others all admit transitive senses where the subject imputes to the object some imagined or intended or resulting condition or state, occasionally even a second object as in The madman thought himself the king.

In the particular case of the verb think such as you have asked about here, the OED has an entire section devoted to these senses. Here is a tiny excerpt:

III. With emphasis on an opinion, judgement, or expectation resulting from the action.

  1. a. transitive. To hold as an opinion, to believe, judge, consider. Usually: to believe without any great assurance, to regard as likely, to have the idea, to suppose; in reference to a future event: to expect (coinciding partly in meaning with sense 12).

  2. To believe or consider something to be possible or likely; to suspect; to expect, anticipate.

    a. transitive. With infinitive.

    b. transitive. With simple object.

  3. With complement.

    a. transitive.

    (a) With or without to be: to believe, consider, or suppose (someone or something) to be; to look upon as.

    (b) With following infinitive other than to be: to suppose (someone or something) to do something. Chiefly, and now only, in passive.

  4. To have a particular (good, bad, or other) opinion of a person or thing; to value or esteem something (highly or otherwise).

    a. transitive. With quantifier or equivalent noun phrase as object.

Remember that this isn’t something that happens with think alone: quite a few other verb“s work the same way as think does here.

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  • Your example 3 seems mismatched to the rest – it’s a ditransitive find with IO and DO, rather than a transitive verb with DO + object compliment like the others (so unlike the others you cannot add in a linking to be there). Was that intentional?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 15:13
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Example 6 is also an IO/DO case, BTW. I had originally had ”I thought him home at the time” which you can add little words to so that it reads “I thought that he was at home at the time” even though there’s no need to. But I was worried about the locative complement unnecessarily confusing people. Should I put back the original? I was trying to use objective pronouns to show that you can’t just swap in a tensed be without changing the case into nominative for the tensed verb.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 16:30
  • Oh yeah, so it is – I think I read it as “so the kitchen turned me into a new pizza” earlier and didn’t think of it closely enough to realise that’s nonsense. :-p I don’t think you have to change the examples, but perhaps point out that they’re not all examples of the same structure and that adding copulas in won’t work for all of them.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 30, 2019 at 19:57
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She thought X a waste of time.

There are many examples of this phrase in Google Books. Here is but one:

Roosevelt and Stalin: Portrait of a Partnership

He thought it a waste of time to invade the rim of a continent with no strategic merit, and dangerous besides.

The verb to think may have a transitive sense of forming a mental picture, and in that case, it can take a simple direct object.

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