Almost noble in New York (6)
I believe the answer is:
nearly
'almost' is the definition.
(I know that almost can be written as nearly)
'noble in new york' is the wordplay.
'noble' becomes 'earl' (earl is a kind of noble).
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'new york' becomes 'ny'.
'earl' going into 'ny' is 'NEARLY'.
(Other definitions for nearly that I've seen before include "Almost, not quite" , "pretty much" , "More or less" , "Not entirely" , "approximately" .)