Unsteady animal in outskirts of Torquay (7)
I believe the answer is:
tottery
'unsteady' is the definition.
(similar in meaning)
'animal in outskirts of torquay' is the wordplay.
'animal' becomes 'otter' (I've seen this before).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'outskirts of' means to remove the middle letters (only letters on the outskirts).
'torquay' with its middle taken out is 'ty'.
'otter' going within 'ty' is 'TOTTERY'.
(Other definitions for tottery that I've seen before include "Likely to rock" , "Frail" , "close to collapse" , "Moving insecurely" , "Unstable on one's feet" .)