Placate retired gentleman when ill-tempered on vacation (6)
I believe the answer is:
disarm
'placate' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'retired gentleman when ill-tempered on vacation' is the wordplay.
'retired' shows that the letters should be reversed in order.
'gentleman' becomes 'mr'.
'when' becomes 'as' (eg 'when I walked' means 'as I walked').
'ill tempered on vacation' becomes 'id' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'mr'+'as'+'id'='mrasid'
'mrasid' backwards is 'DISARM'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for disarm that I've seen before include "Relieve of weapons" , "Abandon weapons" , "Deprive of weapons or win over" , "Give up weapons" , "Make less hostile, win over" .)