Sharpness of article combined with extremes of emotion (6)
I believe the answer is:
acumen
'sharpness' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'article combined with extremes of emotion' is the wordplay.
'article' becomes 'a' (indefinite article).
'combined with' becomes 'cum' (I've seen this before).
'extremes of' means to remove the middle letters.
'emotion' with its middle taken out is 'en'.
'a'+'cum'+'en'='ACUMEN'
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for acumen that I've seen before include "ingenuity" , "Ability to judge quickly and well" , "Forming judgement" , "Quick intelligence" , "Sharpness of mind, good for business" .)