'Prospect' is Latin for 'look forward' — a literal view that became a metaphor for future opportunities.
An expectation or likelihood of a future event; a potential customer or candidate; a wide view of a landscape; to search or explore, especially for mineral deposits.
From Latin prōspectus ("a looking forward, view, prospect"), past participle of prōspicere ("to look forward, look out"), a compound of prō- ("forward, before") and specere ("to look at"). Prō- derives from PIE *pro- ("forward, before, in front of"), one of the most fundamental spatial prepositions, yielding Greek πρό (pró), Sanskrit prá-, Lithuanian pra-, and English fore-/for-. Specere comes from PIE *speḱ- ("to look, observe"), the same root behind species, spectacle, spectrum, specimen, spy, suspect, respect, and auspicious — a family so large it constitutes one of the major semantic domains