Mother in AA not losing love for the hard stuff (7)
I believe the answer is:
adamant
'the hard stuff' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both substances as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'mother in aa not losing love' is the wordplay.
'mother' becomes 'dam' (female parent of an animal).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'losing' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'love' becomes 'o' (love means zero in tennis).
'not' with 'o' taken out is 'nt'.
'dam' going into 'aa' is 'adama'.
'adama'+'nt'='ADAMANT'
'for' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for adamant that I've seen before include "Refusing to change opinion" , "Obdurate and unyielding" , "Data man can be quite unyielding" , "Fabulous rock" , "intractable" .)