"detectorist" / "detectionist"

[Joel S. Berson]

 From an email message today:  "My husband lost his planting trees
about fifteen years ago and a metal detectorist failed to find it."

"Detectorist" is in the OED, as "A person who engages in
metal-detecting. Cf. metal detectorist n."

However, my weak eyes and easily deceived brain led me to look for
"detectionist", which is not in the OED -- but is apparently
sanctioned in Galveston:

The only result that a search of his name turned up was a description
of the Galveston Metal Detectionist League's September 2000 meeting,
at which Redman had been a guest speaker on the topic of "US
government regulations concerning abandoned property vs. concealed property."

In Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction
- Page 97, by Jake Silverstein - 2010.

Whether this is fact or fiction, whether there is or is not a
"Galveston Metal Detectionist League," I do not know.

Google Books gives me about 89 hits for "detectionist", some
indicating that there is a "detectionist thesis" -- and of course
therefore an "anti-detectionist explanation".  One uses
"detectionist" as "detective".

Joel

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