Drop liquid on middle of massive dish (8)
I believe the answer is:
splatter
'drop liquid on middle of massive dish' is the definition.
The answer and definition are not the same part of speech.
'drop liquid on middle of massive dish' is the wordplay.
'drop' suggests taking the first letters (I've seen 'drop of' mean this).
'on' indicates putting letters inside.
'middle of' indicates the central letters.
'dish' becomes 'patter' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
The middle of 'massive' is 's'.
The initial letter of 'liquid' is 'l'.
's'+'patter'='spatter'
'l' inserted into 'spatter' is 'SPLATTER'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for splatter that I've seen before include "Splash with sticky liquid" , "Sprinkle" , "Small amount of something liquid" , "Splash, splutter" , "Splash noisily, about" .)