Shocking treatment on board ship after discovering tiny woodworm, say (7)
I believe the answer is:
insects
'shocking treatment on board ship after discovering tiny woodworm say' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this defines the answer.
'shocking treatment on board ship after discovering tiny' is the wordplay.
'shocking treatment' becomes 'ect' (electro-convulsive therapy).
'on board' means one lot of letters goes inside another (inserted letters are taken on board).
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'after' says to put letters next to each other.
'discovering' says to take the centre (I've seen 'discovered' mean this (dis-covered - outer letters removed)).
The centre of 'tiny' is 'in'.
'ect' put inside 'ss' is 'sects'.
'sects' put after 'in' is 'INSECTS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for insects that I've seen before include "Small animals" , "Six-legged creatures" , "Tiny creatures" , "Six-leggged creatures" , "Flies, fleas etc" .)