One’s crossing street after unhappy, cruel people (7)
I believe the answer is:
sadists
'cruel people' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both people as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'one's crossing street after unhappy' is the wordplay.
'one's' becomes 'is' (Roman numeral).
'crossing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'street' becomes 'st'.
'after' says to put letters next to each other.
'unhappy' becomes 'sad' ('sad' can be a synonym of 'unhappy'**).
'is' enclosing 'st' is 'ists'.
'ists' put after 'sad' is 'SADISTS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sadists that I've seen before include "People who enjoy inflicting pain on others" , "people with a mean streak" , "They take pleasure form inflicting pain" , "Perverted pain-inflicters" , "They like to hurt" .)