Sacred but without ending on the land (4)
I believe the answer is:
acre
'land' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'sacred but without ending on' is the wordplay.
'sacred' becomes 'tabu' (similar in meaning).
'without' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'ending on' becomes 'cre' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'tabu' with 'but' taken out is 'a'.
'a'+'cre'='ACRE'
'the' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for acre that I've seen before include "Care about the land measure" , "Unit of land measurement" , "Persistent tendency" , "Old unit of area - old port" , "stretch of land" .)