Refuse to fight the man before a meal (9)
I believe the answer is:
scrapheap
'a meal' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how one could define the other.
'refuse to fight the man before' is the wordplay.
'refuse to' becomes 'ap' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'fight' becomes 'scrap' (a scrap is a minor fight).
'the man' becomes 'he' (he refers to a man).
'before' says to put letters next to each other.
'scrap'+'he'='scraphe'
'ap' put after 'scraphe' is 'SCRAPHEAP'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for scrapheap that I've seen before include "Pile of discarded metal" , "Discard pile" , "metal tip" , "Waste pile" , "Junk" .)