It rarely worried academic (8)
I believe the answer is:
literary
'academic' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'it rarely worried' is the wordplay.
'worried' indicates anagramming the letters.
'it'+'rarely'='itrarely'
'itrarely' anagrammed gives 'LITERARY'.
(Other definitions for literary that I've seen before include "Concerning books" , "Well-read" , "Learned" , "To do with books, poems etc" , "Relating to books, etc" .)