What the waiter is hoping for - rise, fuel, free bitter? (8)
I believe the answer is:
spiteful
'bitter?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'what the waiter is hoping for rise fuel free' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is found in the answer.
an anagram of 'fuel' is 'eful' which is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spiteful that I've seen before include "Showing malice" , "With desire to hurt" , "Malevolent, wanting to hurt" , "Vengeful, malicious" , "Catty" .)