Democrat powerful releasing one female not working (9)
I believe the answer is:
defective
'working' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are adjectives. Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'democrat powerful releasing one female not' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'democrat' could be 'd' and 'd' is located in the answer.
'one' could be 'i' (Roman numeral) and 'i' is located in the answer.
'female' could be 'f' (common abbreviation) and 'f' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for defective that I've seen before include "Faulty" , "insufficient" , "Flawed" .)