Criticise Calvin embracing Violet (5)

I believe the answer is:

cavil

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'criticise' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'calvin embracing violet' is the wordplay.
'calvin' becomes 'cal' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'embracing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'violet' becomes 'vi'.
'cal' placed around 'vi' is 'CAVIL'.

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(Other definitions for cavil that I've seen before include "Nitpick" , "Raise petty objections" , "Find fault" , "Use false arguments" , "Object unnecessarily" .)

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