Iconic American phone company retaining a good line (5)
I believe the answer is:
eagle
'iconic american' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'phone company retaining a good line' is the wordplay.
'phone company' becomes 'EE' (British mobile network EE).
'retaining' means one lot of letters goes inside another (inserted letters are held or retained).
'good' becomes 'g' (abbreviation).
'line' becomes 'l' (used when specifying particular lines from a poem).
'a'+'g'+'l'='agl'
'ee' enclosing 'agl' is 'EAGLE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for eagle that I've seen before include "might one be bald?" , "Raptor" , "five buck bit, or more" , "Bird of prey; former children's comic" , "Flyer" .)