Reportedly sweet animal (5)
I believe the answer is:
moose
'animal' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'reportedly sweet' is the wordplay.
'reportedly' indicates a 'sounds like' (homophone) clue.
'sweet' becomes 'mousse' (mousse is a kind of sweet).
'mousse' sounds like 'MOOSE'.
(Other definitions for moose that I've seen before include "Large N American deer like European elk" , "Large northern deer" , "North American deer" , "North American elk" , "Ungulate" .)