Bring up smell in river (6)
I believe the answer is:
exhume
'bring up' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with social activities as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'smell in river' is the wordplay.
'smell' becomes 'hum' (something with a bad smell is 'humming').
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'river' becomes 'exe' (River Exe).
'hum' going into 'exe' is 'EXHUME'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for exhume that I've seen before include "Dig up, unearth" , "Disinter a dead body" , "opposite of 5 [ENTOMB]" , "Dig up (a corpse)" , "Reveal" .)