Dog with tail up in the centre of a gathering (5)
I believe the answer is:
curia
'a gathering' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'dog with tail up in the centre of' is the wordplay.
'dog with' becomes 'cur' (both can mean a despicable person. I am not sure about the 'with' bit.).
'tail' means to remove the last letter (I've seen 'tailed' mean this (to tail something can mean to remove its end)).
'up' becomes 'is' (I've seen this in other clues).
'in the' becomes 'aslarge*' (I've seen this before).
'centre of' means to look at the middle letters.
The central letter of 'aslarge' is 'a'.
'is' with its last letter taken off is 'i'.
'cur'+'i'+'a'='CURIA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for curia that I've seen before include "Government department of the Vatican" , "Church organisation" , "Court of the papal see" , "Central church administration in the Vatican" , "Papal court, Vatican government" .)