Emerge from a sea cow back to front (7)
I believe the answer is:
emanate
'emerge from' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a sea cow back to front' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'a' could be 'an' and 'an' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for emanate that I've seen before include "Come forth" , "spring" , "Issue or originate from manatee" , "Flow or proceed from" , "Send out" .)