Close to tears, disregard Italian ladies (7)
I believe the answer is:
signore
'ladies' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both people as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps you can see an association between them that I don't see?
'close to tears disregard italian' is the wordplay.
'close to' says to put letters next to each other.
'tears disregard' becomes 'e' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'italian' becomes 'signor' (Italian equivalent of 'mister').
'e' after 'signor' is 'SIGNORE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for signore that I've seen before include "Italian title" , "man from Italy" , "gentleman of Verona, say" .)