An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/zart

by Friedrich Kluge

zart, adj., ‘tender, soft, fragile, nice,’ from MidHG. and OHG. zart, adj., ‘dear, beloved, precious, confidential, fine, beautiful’; unknown to the other OTeut. dialects. Like the properly equiv. traut, zart appears to be a partic. with the suffix to-. Teut. tar-do, from Aryan dr-tó- (comp. satt, tot), is most closely related to the Zend partic. dereta, ‘honoured’; comp. Sans. â-dṛ, ‘to direct one's attention to something.’ The Teut. word cannot have been borrowed from Lat. carus, ‘dear.’