An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/zart

by Friedrich Kluge

zart, adjective, ‘tender, soft, fragile, nice,’ from Middle High German and Old High German zart, adjective, ‘dear, beloved, precious, confidential, fine, beautiful’; unknown to the other Old Teutonic dialects. Like the properly equivalent traut, zart appears to be a participle with the suffix to-. Teutonic tar-do, from Aryan dr-tó- (compare satt, tot), is most closely related to the Zend participle dereta, ‘honoured’; compare Sanscrit â-dṛ, ‘to direct one's attention to something.’ The Teutonic word cannot have been borrowed from Latin carus, ‘dear.’