Wording wears thin in speech (6)
I believe the answer is:
phrase
'wording' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'wears thin in speech' is the wordplay.
'wears thin' becomes 'frays'.
'in speech' shows a homophone (sound like).
'frays' sounds like 'PHRASE'.
(Other definitions for phrase that I've seen before include "Expression without a verb" , "Group of words forming part of a sentence" , "Group of words without a verb" , "Sequence of words" , "Group of words within a sentence" .)