Meets rising top extreme respect (6)
I believe the answer is:
esteem
'respect' is the definition.
(I know that respect can be written as esteem)
'meets rising top extreme' is the wordplay.
'meets' says to put letters next to each other.
'rising' becomes 'steem' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'top' indicates taking the first letters (in a down clue, the first letter is top).
The initial letter of 'extreme' is 'e'.
'steem' put after 'e' is 'ESTEEM'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for esteem that I've seen before include "Hold in high regard and respect" , "credit" , "Revere - prize" , "Honour - regard" , "judge" .)