Drake's action heading off silly gossip (6)
I believe the answer is:
waddle
'drake's' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't see how they can define each other.
'action heading off silly gossip' is the wordplay.
'action' becomes 'EW' (EW is an example).
'heading off' means to remove the first letter.
'silly gossip' becomes 'addle' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ew' with its first letter removed is 'w'.
'w'+'addle'='WADDLE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for waddle that I've seen before include "Walk duck-fashion" , "Duck-like walk" , "Clumsy swaying walk" , "Walk like duck, fat man" , "Walk with a clumsy sway" .)