Contemptible individual is short of goodness (5)
I believe the answer is:
crumb
'contemptible individual' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'short of goodness' is the wordplay.
'short of' means to remove the last letter (I've seen 'shorter' mean this).
'goodness' becomes 'crumbs' (both are exclamations of shock).
'crumbs' with its final letter removed is 'CRUMB'.
'is' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for crumb that I've seen before include "Very small quantity of something, especially food" , "tiny amount" , "Scrap of bread" , "Small piece of bread (or comfort!)" , "Small piece of e.g. bread or cake" .)