Stirring tonic essentially into a weak gin cocktail (9)
I believe the answer is:
awakening
'stirring' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'tonic essentially into a weak gin cocktail' is the wordplay.
'essentially' indicates the central letters.
'into' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'cocktail' indicates anagramming the letters.
The central letter of 'tonic' is 'n'.
'a'+'weak'+'gin'='aweakgin'
'aweakgin' with letters rearranged gives 'awakenig'.
'n' placed within 'awakenig' is 'AWAKENING'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for awakening that I've seen before include "Stopping sleeping" , "Animating" , "state of arousal?" , "Cessation of sleep" , "Rousing - stirring" .)