A single member down by the sea, zero earlier (3-5)
I believe the answer is:
one-armed
'a single member down' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Perhaps you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'by the sea zero earlier' is the wordplay.
'by' becomes 'near' (I've seen this in another clue).
'the sea' becomes 'med' (short for Mediterranean).
'zero' becomes 'O' (O resembles 0).
'earlier' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'near'+'med'='nearmed'
'nearmed' put after 'o' is 'ONE-ARMED'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for one-armed that I've seen is " A slot machine is considered to be this type of bandit".)