English

Noun

prospect ‎(plural prospects)

1. The region which the eye overlooks at one time; view; scene; outlook.
   • Milton

     His eye discovers unaware / The goodly prospect of some foreign land.

2. A picturesque or panoramic view; a landscape; hence, a sketch of a landscape.
   • Evelyn

     I went to Putney […] to take prospects in crayon.

3. A position affording a fine view; a lookout.
   • 1667, Milton, Paradise Lost

     Him God beholding from his prospect high.

4. Relative position of the front of a building or other structure; face; relative aspect.
   • Bible, Ezekiel xl. 44

     Their prospect was toward the south.

5. The act of looking forward; foresight; anticipation.
   • John Locke

     a very ill prospect of a future state

   • Tillotson

     Is he a prudent man as to his temporal estate, that lays designs only for a day, without any prospect to, or provision for, the remaining part of life?

6. The potential things that may come to pass, often favorable.
   • 1788, James Hutton, Theory of the earth, page 166:

     The result, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,— no prospect of an end.

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 2, in The Celebrity:

     We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect of so large a case. Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines.

   • 2011 September 2, Phil McNulty, “Bulgaria 0-3 England”, in BBC:

     And a further boost to England's qualification prospects came after the final whistle when Wales recorded a 2-1 home win over group rivals Montenegro, who Capello's men face in their final qualifier.

   • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19:

     It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

7. A hope; a hopeful.
   • 2011 November 10, Jeremy Wilson, “England Under 21 5 Iceland Under 21 0: match report”, in Telegraph:

     The most persistent tormentor was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who scored a hat-trick in last month’s corresponding fixture in Iceland. His ability to run at defences is instantly striking, but it is his clever use of possession that has persuaded some shrewd judges that he is an even better prospect than Theo Walcott.

8. (sports) Any player whose rights are owned by a top-level professional team, but who has yet to play a game for said team.
9. (music) The façade of an organ.

Translations

Verb

prospect ‎(third-person singular simple present prospects, present participle prospecting, simple past and past participle prospected)

1. (intransitive) To search, as for gold.
2. (geology, mining) To determine which minerals or metals are present in a location.

Translations