Canteen carrying on keeping meal cool (10)
I believe the answer is:
modishness
'cool' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both human attributes as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'canteen carrying on keeping meal' is the wordplay.
'canteen' becomes 'mess' (I've seen this before).
'carrying' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'keeping' indicates putting letters inside.
'meal' becomes 'dish' (I've seen this in other clues**).
'on' placed around 'dish' is 'odishn'.
'mess' enclosing 'odishn' is 'MODISHNESS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for modishness that I've seen before include "fashion" , "brief popularity" .)