Abrupt woman may hesitate (5)
I believe the answer is:
sheer
'abrupt' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'woman may hesitate' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'woman' could be 'she' and 'she' is present in the answer.
'hesitate' could be 'er' (expression used when hesitating) and 'er' is found in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sheer that I've seen before include "avoid an unpleasant thing" , "Very thin and fine" , "Gossamer or precipitous" , "Very steep; utter" , "Arrant" .)
