Civil servant chap needing bravery for the most part (8)
I believe the answer is:
mandarin
'civil servant' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'chap needing bravery for the most part' is the wordplay.
'chap' becomes 'man' (I've seen this before).
'needing' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'bravery' becomes 'daring' (daring is a kind of bravery).
'for the most part' means to remove the last letter.
'daring' with its last letter taken away is 'darin'.
'man'+'darin'='MANDARIN'
(Other definitions for mandarin that I've seen before include "Top civil servant" , "Powerful official; fruit" , "Chinese official - fruit" , "Bigwig" , "Language formerly used by educated Chinese, or a kind of orange" .)