Barely filled tin after inserting stone? On the contrary (5)
I believe the answer is:
scant
'barely' is the definition.
'filled tin after inserting stone? on the contrary' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'tin' could be 'can' (synonyms) and 'can' is located in the answer.
'stone?' could be 'st' (abbreviation) and 'st' is located in the remaining letters.
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 scant that I've seen before include "Little" , "Minimal (amount)" , "Reduce" , "Barely adequate" , "Hardly any" .)