Childish weapon produced by Pole present at dance (8)
I believe the answer is:
snowball
'childish weapon' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'pole present at dance' is the wordplay.
'pole' becomes 's' (abbreviation for South, as in South Pole).
'present' becomes 'now' (both can mean the current period).
'at' says to put letters next to each other.
'dance' becomes 'ball' (ball is a kind of dance).
's'+'now'+'ball'='SNOWBALL'
'produced by' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for snowball that I've seen before include "Missile thrown by children in hard winter" , "Increase in importance" , "Keep getting bigger" , "Quickly grow" , "Increase rapidly in size - advocaat and lemonade" .)