Eating the unfortunate Ivor’s heart out (9)
I believe the answer is:
corrosive
'out' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'eating the unfortunate ivor's heart' is the wordplay.
'eating' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the unfortunate' indicates anagramming the letters.
'heart' becomes 'core' (synonyms).
'ivors' anagrammed gives 'rosiv'.
'rosiv' placed within 'core' is 'CORROSIVE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for corrosive that I've seen before include "Hurtful" , "Destroying by chemical action" , "Caustic, erosive" , "Able to eat away" , "Caustic and destructive" .)