English

Noun

prospection ‎(plural prospections)

1. The action of looking forward into the future. Formed by analogy with retrospection. Not in common use, but there is some modern use and the OED gives citation back to the 19th and 17th centuries.
2. The act of prospecting for minerals. Also not in common use.
3. A search for archaeological remains, usually using modern technology, for example ground penetrating radar.

References

• "Prospection as a feature of Structure" Mona Baker, Gill Francis, Elena Tognini-Bonelli "Text and technology: in honour of John Sinclair" http://books.google.com/books?id=7-Bzc_XjBikC&p71, 1993 John Benjamins Publishing Company ISBN 978-90-272-2138-4-
• "First part of the prospection fulfilled, prospection still active" Susan Hunston, Gill Francis, "Pattern grammar: a corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of English" http://books.google.co/books?id=UUmtzBRd4VcC&, p242, 2000 John Benjamins Publishing Company, ISBN 978-90-272-2274-9
• "The problem with this error of retrospection is that it can keep us from discovering our errors of prospection" Daniel Gilbert "Stumbling on Happiness" Knopf New York 2006 ISBN 1-4000-4266-6}}

French

Noun

prospection f ‎(plural prospections)

1. prospecting