Surprisingly sweatier in a way (2,2,4)
I believe the answer is:
as it were
'in a way' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'surprisingly sweatier' is the wordplay.
'surprisingly' indicates an anagram.
'sweatier' anagrammed gives 'AS IT WERE'.
(Other definitions for as it were that I've seen before include "In a manner of speaking" , "Historically ungrammatical" , "So to speak" , "In sort of" , "you may say" .)