Crossword Genius

Army officer in house on short break (9)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

semicolon

'short break' is the definition.
(punctuation mark creating a break in a sentence)

'army officer in house on' is the wordplay.
'army officer' becomes 'col' (short for colonel).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'house' becomes 'semi' (short for semi-detached).
'semi'+'on'='semion'
'col' placed into 'semion' is 'SEMICOLON'.

(Other definitions for semicolon that I've seen before include "can cut sentence" , "used by writers for a break" , "half a stop" , "Joiner" , "Item of punctuation" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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