Hand is superfluous missing ship (6)
I believe the answer is:
needle
'hand' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'superfluous missing ship' is the wordplay.
'superfluous' becomes 'needless' (I've seen this before).
'missing' suggests deleting specific letters.
'ship' becomes 'ss'.
'needless' with 'ss' taken away is 'NEEDLE'.
'is' is the link.
(Other definitions for needle that I've seen before include "Leaf of a 15 across" , "Item for sewer" , "Moveable bar in a compass" , "Annoy - bodkin" , "Enmity" .)