Merit a couple of eggs from French waiter? (7)
I believe the answer is:
deserve
'merit' is the definition.
(I know that merit can be written as deserve)
'a couple of eggs from french waiter?' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'couple' could be 'serve' (serving is a kind of coupling) and 'serve' is found in the answer.
'from french' could be 'de' ('from' in French) and 'de' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for deserve that I've seen before include "Be worth" , "rate" , "Be entitled to" , "Merit, earn" , "Justify" .)