Play guitar, tense, pale, and close to crying (5)
I believe the answer is:
twang
'play guitar' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both human attributes as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'tense pale and close to crying' is the wordplay.
'tense' becomes 't' (grammatical abbreviation).
'pale' becomes 'wan' (wan can mean pale or grey).
'and' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'close to' indicates one should take the final letters (the close of something is the end).
The last letter of 'crying' is 'g'.
't'+'wan'+'g'='TWANG'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for twang that I've seen before include "accent's nasal sound" , "Local accent" , "Nasal accent" , "it takes pluck to produce?" , "Sort of sound" .)