Basic French food suffering (4)
I believe the answer is:
pain
'suffering' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'basic french food' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'food' could be 'a' (A is an example) and 'a' is found within the answer.
The remaining letters 'pin' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for pain that I've seen before include "Symptom of hurt or disorder" , "French bread?" , "Mental distress" , "Suffering, ache" , "Physical hurt" .)