Little chap clutched by a singer (4)
I believe the answer is:
mike
'a singer' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'little chap clutched by' is the wordplay.
'little' means to remove the last letter (the word is not quite complete).
'chap' becomes 'Ed' (short for Edward).
'clutched' becomes 'mik' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'by' says to put letters next to each other.
'ed' with its final letter taken off is 'e'.
'e' put after 'mik' is 'MIKE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for mike that I've seen before include "Singers hold this" , "Boy's name; piece of recording equipment" , "megaphone" , "Device collecting sound from a singer, say - boy's name (abbr)" , "that helps speaker to be heard" .)