Women at institute sped off to lecture all over the place (10)
I believe the answer is:
widespread
'all over the place' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'women at institute sped off to lecture' is the wordplay.
'women' becomes 'w' (standard abbreviation).
'at' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'institute' becomes 'i' (common abbreviation as in MIT).
'off' indicates anagramming the letters.
'to lecture' becomes 'read' (I've seen this before).
'sped' anagrammed gives 'desp'.
'w'+'i'+'desp'+'read'='WIDESPREAD'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for widespread that I've seen before include "Generally prevalent" , "available to lots of people" , "common" , "broad" , "found in many places" .)