Wife dumped by author outside church — I understood the quaking! (7)
I believe the answer is:
richter
'wife dumped by author outside church' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this definition defines the answer.
'i understood the quaking' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'i' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'the' is 'hte' 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 richter that I've seen before include "Earthquakes are measured on this scale" , "This scale measures earth tremors" , "Scale of disaster" , "Scale for measuring earth tremors" , "scale of upheavals" .)