Wife sleeps around, returning to produce offspring? (5)
I believe the answer is:
spawn
'offspring?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'wife sleeps around returning' is the wordplay.
'wife' becomes 'w'.
'sleeps' becomes 'naps' (napping is a kind of sleeping).
'around' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'returning' says the letters should be written in reverse.
'w' going into 'naps' is 'nwaps'.
'nwaps' written backwards gives 'SPAWN'.
'to produce' is the link.
(Other definitions for spawn that I've seen before include "Breed" , "generator" , "Produce" , "Frog eggs" , "Eggs deposited by fish" .)