Limit state and work endlessly for most sincere sycophant? (8)
I believe the answer is:
imitator
'limit state' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how they can define each other.
'work endlessly for most sincere sycophant?' is the wordplay.
'work' becomes 'oratorio' (type of musical work).
'endlessly' says to take the centre (the ends of the words are removed).
'for' means one lot of letters go next to another (I've seen this in other clues).
'most sincere sycophant?' becomes 'imit' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The central letters of 'oratorio' are 'ator'.
'ator' after 'imit' is 'IMITATOR'.
'and' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for imitator that I've seen before include "Copier, mimic" , "A trio, Tim, is a mimic" , "Someone copying the behaviour of another" , "One who copies another" , "parrot" .)