Sport welcomes leading African-American goddess (5)
I believe the answer is:
fauna
'goddess' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how one could define the other.
'sport welcomes leading african-american' is the wordplay.
'sport' becomes 'fun' (synonyms).
'welcomes' means one lot of letters goes inside another (in sense of 'invites in').
'leading' indicates taking the first letters (the leading letter of the word).
'american' becomes 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names).
The first letter of 'african' is 'a'.
'fun' placed around 'a' is 'faun'.
'faun'+'a'='FAUNA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for fauna that I've seen before include "Local animal life" , "Flora and - -" , "Animal kingdom" , "Animals of a region or habitat" , "Animal life of an area" .)