Abolish patent department without getting upset (9)
I believe the answer is:
overthrow
'abolish' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with social activities as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'patent department without getting upset' is the wordplay.
'patent' becomes 'overt' (both can mean obvious).
'department' becomes 'hr' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'without' becomes 'wo' (abbreviation of 'without', normally with a slash).
'getting upset' is a reversal indicator.
'wo' backwards is 'ow'.
'overt'+'hr'+'ow'='OVERTHROW'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for overthrow that I've seen before include "Dethrone, cause downfall of" , "Subvert" , "destruction" , "Dethrone or oust" , "Error on cricket field - defeat" .)