Shocks priest, ultimately, with brief penitence (7)
I believe the answer is:
tremors
'shocks' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both acts as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'priest ultimately with brief penitence' is the wordplay.
'ultimately' says to take the final letters.
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'brief' means to remove the last letter.
'penitence' becomes 'remorse' (I've seen this before).
The final letter of 'priest' is 't'.
'remorse' with its final letter taken away is 'remors'.
't'+'remors'='TREMORS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for tremors that I've seen before include "Quakings" , "Err most (anag.)" , "Quivering movements" , "The shakes" , "Small earthquakes" .)