Dicky perished after overwhelming century breaks (9)
I believe the answer is:
deciphers
'breaks' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are verbs in their -s form, I can't see how one could define the other.
'dicky perished after overwhelming century' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'century' could be 'c' (common abbreviation) and 'c' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'perished' is 'deiphers' which is within the left over letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for deciphers that I've seen is " Decodes or interprets".)