One held in jail around city — rough situation? (11)
I believe the answer is:
imprecision
'rough situation?' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'one held in jail around city' is the wordplay.
'one' becomes 'i' (Roman numeral).
'held in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'jail' becomes 'imprison' (synonyms).
'around' indicates putting letters inside.
'city' becomes 'EC' (postcode for the City of London).
'i' going into 'imprison' is 'imprision'.
'imprision' placed around 'ec' is 'IMPRECISION'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for imprecision that I've seen before include "Inexactness" , "Lack of accuracy" , "Inaccuracy" , "Lack of exactness" .)