Pound piano after yank stops short (4)
I believe the answer is:
pulp
'pound' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'piano after yank stops short' is the wordplay.
'piano' becomes 'p'.
'after' says to put letters next to each other.
'yank' becomes 'pull'.
'stops short' means to remove the last letter (I've seen 'stopping short' mean this).
'pull' with its final letter removed is 'pul'.
'p' put after 'pul' is 'PULP'.
(Other definitions for pulp that I've seen before include "Tarantino film with John Travolta" , "Crush" , "Soft fruit flesh" , "recycle paper" , "Cheap fiction" .)