Character breaking tea urn (6)
I believe the answer is:
nature
'character' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'breaking tea urn' is the wordplay.
'breaking' indicates an anagram.
'tea'+'urn'='teaurn'
'teaurn' is an anagram of 'NATURE'.
(Other definitions for nature that I've seen before include "Tea-urn for outdoors" , "The external, untouched world" , "type?" , "Essential quality" , "scientific journal" .)