Cold in river on Italian craft (6)
I believe the answer is:
deceit
'craft' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'cold in river on italian' is the wordplay.
'cold' becomes 'c' (eg on taps).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'river' becomes 'dee' (River Dee).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'italian' becomes 'it' (abbreviation for Italian).
'c' going into 'dee' is 'dece'.
'dece'+'it'='DECEIT'
(Other definitions for deceit that I've seen before include "fake" , "Chicanery" , "Fraud or duplicity" , "Dissimulation" , "Lying" .)