The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 4 letter word SALT
I've seen this crossword clue in The Daily Telegraph
S
A
L
T
More clues leading to the result SALT
- Old sailor starts to serve another long tour
- Sailor posed outside front of library
- Season Six avoids tax, originally set around Luxembourg
- Navy chap talks about weapons reduction
- Preserve discussions to reduce nuclear danger, initially
- With fish and chips often sprinkled last
- Cross, but without anger or heat of old
- Sailor perched when traversing lake
- Sailor‘s pungent wit
- Old sailor‘s cure?
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Old sailor/cure" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case old sailor/cure = salt.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does SALT mean?
SALT noun- A common substance, chemically consisting mainly of sodium chloride (NaCl), used extensively as a condiment and preservative.
- One of the compounds formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, where a positive ion replaces a hydrogen of the acid.
- A salt marsh, a saline marsh at the shore of a sea.
- A sailor (also old salt).
- Randomly chosen bytes added to a plaintext message prior to encrypting or hashing it, in order to render brute-force decryption more difficult.
- A person who seeks employment at a company in order to (once employed by it) help unionize it.
- Flavour; taste; seasoning.
- Piquancy; wit; sense.
- A dish for salt at table; a salt cellar.
- Skepticism and common sense.
- Indignation; outrage; arguing.
- To add salt to.
- To deposit salt as a saline solution.
- To fill with salt between the timbers and planks, as a ship, for the preservation of the timber.
- To insert or inject something into an object to give it properties it would not naturally have.
- To include colorful language in.
- To add filler bytes before encrypting, in order to make brute-force decryption more resource-intensive.
- Salty; salted.
- Saline.
- Related to salt deposits, excavation, processing or use.
- Bitter; sharp; pungent.
- Salacious; lecherous; lustful; (of animals) in heat.
- Costly; expensive.