Dry and extremely delicate late husband cocked up on drug (9)
I believe the answer is:
dehydrate
'dry' is the definition.
(dehydrating is a kind of drying)
'late husband cocked up on drug' is the wordplay.
'late' says to take the final letters (I've seen 'latest of' mean this).
'cocked up' becomes 'hydrate' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'drug' becomes 'e' (E is another name for ecstasy).
The last letter of 'husband' is 'd'.
'hydrate' put after 'e' is 'ehydrate'.
'd'+'ehydrate'='DEHYDRATE'
'and extremely delicate' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for dehydrate that I've seen before include "Preserve by removing all liquid from" , "Remove water from" , "Lose a lot of water" , "Deprive of water" , "Remove moisture from, make dry" .)