Separate night ends in gloomy quarter (9)
I believe the answer is:
dismantle
'separate' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to change as well as being verbs in their base form.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'night ends in gloomy quarter' is the wordplay.
'ends' means to remove the middle letters.
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'gloomy' becomes 'dismal' (synonyms).
'quarter' becomes 'e'.
'night' with its middle taken out is 'nt'.
'nt' placed within 'dismal' is 'dismantl'.
'dismantl'+'e'='DISMANTLE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for dismantle that I've seen before include "To demolish" , "Take to bits" , "strike" , "Pull to pieces" , "Unrig" .)