Treat leniently those initiating some offensive frivolity in British school (2,4,2)
'treat leniently' is the definition.
(I know this)
'those initiating some offensive frivolity in british school' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'those' could be 'yon' (historic English pronoun equivalent to 'those') and 'yon' is located in the answer.
'some' could be 'a' and 'a' is found within the answer.
'school' could be 's' and 's' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'goe' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for go easy on that I've seen is " To spare harsh treatment".)
'treat leniently' is the definition.
(to be soft on something is to treat it leniently)
'those initiating some offensive frivolity in british school' is the wordplay.
'those initiating' says to take the initial letters (the letters which begin or initiate the words).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'british' becomes 'b' (abbreviation e.g. in BBC).
'school' becomes 'eton' (famous UK public school).
The initial letters of 'some offensive frivolity' is 'sof'.
'b'+'eton'='beton'
'sof' put into 'beton' is 'BE SOFT ON'.