Yellow rope encircling wide area by empty lay-by (8)
I believe the answer is:
cowardly
'yellow' is the definition.
(similar in meaning)
'by empty lay-by' is the wordplay.
'by' becomes 'coward' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'empty' means to remove the middle letters.
'by' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'lay' with its middle taken out is 'ly'.
'coward'+'ly'='COWARDLY'
'rope encircling wide area' acts as a link.
This may not be correct. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cowardly that I've seen before include "Lacking courage" , "Lily-livered" , "Faint-hearted" , "Yellow" , "chicken" .)
