Wears tie loose? In a way (2,2,4)
I believe the answer is:
as it were
'in a way' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'wears tie loose?' is the wordplay.
'loose?' indicates anagramming the letters (letters are loosened from their original positions).
'wears'+'tie'='wearstie'
'wearstie' is an anagram of 'AS IT WERE'.
(Other definitions for as it were that I've seen before include "Seemingly" , "In sort of" , "you may say" , "Historically ungrammatical" , "Just like if really so" .)