Primitive, the French blokes, and others round about (9)
I believe the answer is:
elemental
'primitive' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'the french blokes and others round about' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is found in the answer.
'blokes' could be 'men' (bloke can informally mean a man) and 'men' is found in the answer.
'about' could be 'a' (abbreviation in Chambers) and 'a' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for elemental that I've seen before include "Of nature's powers" , "radical" , "Basic, rudimentary" , "Let me lean like forces of nature" , "of fire, say" .)