Increasingly guaranteed to suppress tear in cessation of hostilities? (9)
I believe the answer is:
surrender
'cessation of hostilities?' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'increasingly guaranteed to suppress tear' is the wordplay.
'increasingly guaranteed' becomes 'surer' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to suppress' means one lot of letters goes inside another (inserted letters are suppressed or crushed).
'tear' becomes 'rend' (rending is a kind of tearing).
'surer' placed around 'rend' is 'SURRENDER'.
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for surrender that I've seen before include "Cede" , "submission" , "Wave the white flag" , "Yield, give in" , "Submit (to an opponent)" .)