New arrival concealing cocaine dependence (9)
I believe the answer is:
addiction
'new arrival' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'concealing cocaine dependence' is the wordplay.
'concealing' suggests deleting specific letters.
'dependence' becomes 'cocaineaddiction' (cocaine addiction is a kind of dependence).
'cocaineaddiction' with 'cocaine' removed is 'ADDICTION'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for addiction that I've seen before include "Obsession" , "The origin of dependence" , "Something to kick" , "Bug one's caught" , "hard to stop" .)