Small tame animal swallowing cold drink that's colourful (8)
I believe the answer is:
spectrum
'that's colourful' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this defines the answer.
'small tame animal swallowing cold drink' is the wordplay.
'small' becomes 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size).
'tame animal' becomes 'pet' (pets are tamed animals).
'swallowing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'cold' becomes 'c' (eg on taps).
'drink' becomes 'rum' (rum is a kind of drink).
'pet' placed around 'c' is 'pect'.
's'+'pect'+'rum'='SPECTRUM'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spectrum that I've seen before include "Complete colour range" , "A broad range, of colours say" , "Full range of colour" , "An entire range of related qualities of crumpets" , "Bands of colour in crumpets" .)