Quietly engineer Unionist to join popular publishing house (7)
I believe the answer is:
penguin
'publishing house' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how one could define the other.
'quietly engineer unionist to join popular' is the wordplay.
'quietly' becomes 'p' (p for piano and quiet).
'engineer' becomes 'eng' ().
'unionist' becomes 'u' (abbreviation as in Democratic Unionist Party).
'to join' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'popular' becomes 'in'.
'p'+'eng'+'u'+'in'='PENGUIN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for penguin that I've seen before include "King's an example" , "Black-and-white antarctic bird" , "paperback" , "Antarctic seabird with flippers for wings" , "Swimming bird" .)