Youth? Fresh years, including golden one (8)
I believe the answer is:
minority
'youth?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'fresh years including golden one' is the wordplay.
'fresh' becomes 'mint' ().
'years' becomes 'y' (abbreviation).
'including' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'golden' becomes 'or' ('or' is the name for gold in heraldry).
'one' becomes 'i' (Roman numeral).
'mint'+'y'='minty'
'or'+'i'='ori'
'minty' placed around 'ori' is 'MINORITY'.
(Other definitions for minority that I've seen before include "Smaller of two groups" , "Lesser number" , "Smaller number" , "Less than 50% or 18" , "State without legal responsibility" .)