Downgrade paid off, containing singular anger (9)
I believe the answer is:
disparage
'downgrade' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'paid off containing singular anger' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'singular' could be 's' (abbreviation sometimes used in dictionaries) and 's' is found within the answer.
an anagram of 'paid' is 'dipa' which is within the remaining letters.
'anger' could be 'rage' (rage is a kind of anger) and 'rage' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for disparage that I've seen before include "Belittled" , "Slight" , "Scorn" , "I grasped a change to belittle" , "Run down" .)