Wears tie askew, so to speak (2,2,4)
I believe the answer is:
as it were
'so to speak' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'wears tie askew' is the wordplay.
'askew' indicates an anagram.
'wears'+'tie'='wearstie'
'wearstie' anagrammed gives 'AS IT WERE'.
(Other definitions for as it were that I've seen before include "In a manner of speaking" , "In a kind of way" , "you might say" , "So to speak" , "Historically ungrammatical" .)