perscrutation

plural perscrutations

1. rareA thorough searching; a minute inquiry or scrutiny.

   The first and universall reasons are of a hard perscrutation.

   1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 103

   1 more example

   Such guessing, visioning, dim perscrutation of the momentous future: the very clothmakers, old women, all townsfolk speak of it

   1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 8, The Election”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk)