Blame kept out of sight in church (5)
I believe the answer is:
chide
'blame' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with communicating as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'kept out of sight in church' is the wordplay.
'kept out of sight' becomes 'hid' (I've seen this before).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'church' becomes 'CE' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'hid' going within 'ce' is 'CHIDE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chide that I've seen before include "Tell off" , "Santa's laugh" , "Tear off strip" , "Reprove" , "Seeing scold" .)