Punish Paul for being shifty about a car (6)
I believe the answer is:
larrup
'punish' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are verbs in their base form, I cannot understand how they can define each other.
'paul for being shifty about a car' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'about' could be 'a' (abbreviation in Chambers) and 'a' is found within the answer.
'car' could be 'rr' (Rolls Royce) and 'rr' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for larrup that I've seen before include "Flog" , "Hit hard" .)