For some years, start and finish half dead (6)
I believe the answer is:
decade
'for some years' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'start and finish half dead' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'dead' could be 'dec' and 'dec' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for decade that I've seen before include "Series of 10 years" , "Tenth of a century" , "Period of ten years" , "Group of ten things" , "number of years" .)