Is “dégoter” in the sense of “essayer de trouver” only used in Switzerland?

Question

I just said in conversation:

Ils ne vont pas tarder à rappliquer, remarque. Contente-toi de nous dégoter un bon petit restau pour ce soir !

... and my colleague pointed out that he might just as well have phrased the sentence as:

Contente-toi d'essayer de nous dégoter un bon petit restau pour ce soir !

I checked this up on Wiktionnaire, and it indeed says that this particular usage of "dégoter" in the sense of "essayer de trouver", not just "trouver", is only seen in Switzerland.

I find myself dropping "essayer" when using "dégoter" like this, but I wonder how native French speakers from France, Canada, and Belgium commonly phrase this?

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Now that I think about it, when I use "dégoter" in the following context, for instance, the idea of "essayer" is not included; merely the idea of "having found it by chance".

Elle a eu la gentillesse de nous dégoter une bouteille de Beaujolais Nouveau.

Answer 1

"Dégoter" comes from a game where it was the use to shout :"Dégot s'en va !" when the player was trying to score, so basically, dégoter used to mean "to give it a try" while playing to this game.

I'm sure in France and Belgium no native speaker will ever understand "dégoter" as in Switzerland.

In Canada however, I wouldn't be surprised, many french words in Canada and Switzerland are closer to their etymology than they are in France.

Answer 2

As a native French speaker from France I will give you some insight about how we use "dégoter" here.

As everything else in French, it's again a matter of context.

"Il est sorti en boîte de nuit, il s'est dégoté une fille pour la soirée" - "He went to a night club and found a girl for the night"

Here dégoter gives the idea of trials and errors. The girl he found was likely not his first choice and also express a slight idea of randomness behind finding the girl.

Whereas in "Il nous a dégoter un petit resto" - "He found us a little restaurant"

Here it somewhat expresses the idea of expertise. Dégoter means finding a secret gem.

But I can confirm that French people do use dégoter. It's use by people liking the precision of language as well as by everyday people that naturally have a thing to use typical expressive French.