A distinctive feature of the said salver (5)
I believe the answer is:
trait
'a distinctive feature' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'the said salver' is the wordplay.
'the' becomes 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects).
'said salver' becomes 'rait' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
't'+'rait'='TRAIT'
'of' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for trait that I've seen before include "Distinguishing characteristic of personality" , "Quirk" , "Mannerism" , "Distinguishing feature" , "A characteristic of straitened kind" .)