Amends article skewering coppers (7)
I believe the answer is:
penance
'amends' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'article skewering coppers' is the wordplay.
'article' becomes 'an' (indefinite article).
'skewering' means one lot of letters goes inside another (I've seen this in other clues).
'coppers' becomes 'pence' (I've seen this before).
'an' going into 'pence' is 'PENANCE'.
(Other definitions for penance that I've seen before include "Voluntary self-punishment" , "Act of contrition" , "Punishment imposed for sin" , "Self-imposed punishment" , "Punishment for wrongdoing, by religion perhaps" .)