Tense and terse response to a well-chosen gift? (7,7)
I believe the answer is:
present perfect
'tense' is the definition.
(present perfect is a grammatical tense)
'and terse response to a well-chosen gift?' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'and' could be 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and') and 'n' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'terse' is 'reset' which is located in the left over letters.
'a' could be 'per' (eg 'one a day' means 'one per day') and 'per' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
(Other definitions for present perfect that I've seen before include "giver is happy to hear this?" , "Tense" , "I have left in this?" , "writing the briefest of thank you letters?" .)