Taint by dropping softly in the dirt (5)
I believe the answer is:
spoil
'taint' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'softly in the dirt' is the wordplay.
'softly' becomes 'p'.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the dirt' becomes 'soil' (synonyms).
'p' inserted within 'soil' is 'SPOIL'.
'by dropping' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spoil that I've seen before include "decompose" , "Earth from excavation" , "Cook" , "Butcher" , "Impair" .)