Stirring tonic essentially into a weak gin cocktail (9)
I believe the answer is:
awakening
'stirring' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe they are linked in a way I don't understand?
'tonic essentially into a weak gin cocktail' is the wordplay.
'essentially' means to look at the middle letters.
'into' is an insertion indicator.
'cocktail' is an anagram indicator.
The middle of 'tonic' is 'n'.
'a'+'weak'+'gin'='aweakgin'
'aweakgin' anagrammed gives 'awakenig'.
'n' inserted into 'awakenig' is 'AWAKENING'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for awakening that I've seen before include "Stopping sleeping" , "Animating" , "state of arousal?" , "Cessation of sleep" , "Rousing - stirring" .)