Machine gun dude fed to a Scot surreptitiously (8)
I believe the answer is:
staccato
'machine gun' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'dude fed to a scot surreptitiously' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'dude' could be 'cat' (American slang for man, esp in Jazz) and 'cat' is present in the answer.
'a' is within the answer.
an anagram of 'scot' is 'stco' which is present in the left over letters.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for staccato that I've seen before include "With notes short and separated (music)" , "Abrupt" , "Musically, in sharp disconnected manner" , "With sharply detached notes (music)" , "Disjointed, not smooth and flowing" .)