The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 6 letter word CANARY
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
C
A
N
A
R
Y
More clues leading to the result CANARY
- Bird call receiving an answer
- Container a railway emptied for flier
- Colourful singer is able to achieve recognition? Yes, initially
- Grant, perhaps, to import a new sweet wine
- Informant about to spin a yarn
- Yellow bird, a short-tailed duck crossing channel? Yes
- Kind of yellow grass
- Chap oddly never gets bird
- Any car sprayed yellow
- Grant keeps a new variety of 24
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "Colourful singer" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case colourful singer = canary.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does CANARY mean?
CANARY noun- A small, usually yellow, finch (genus Serinus), a songbird native to the Canary Islands.
- Any of various small birds of different countries, most of which are largely yellow in colour.
- A light, slightly greenish, yellow colour.
- A light, sweet, white wine from the Canary Islands.
- A lively dance, possibly of Spanish origin (also called canaries).
- Any test subject, especially an inadvertent or unwilling one. (From the mining practice of using canaries to detect dangerous gases.)
- A value placed in memory such that it will be the first data corrupted by a buffer overflow, allowing the program to identify and recover from it.
- A female singer, soprano, a coloratura singer.
- An informer or snitch; a squealer.
- A (usually yellow) capsule of the short-acting barbiturate pentobarbital/pentobarbitone (Nembutal).
- A yellow sticker of unroadworthiness.
- To dance nimbly (as in the canary dance)
- To inform or snitch, to betray secrets, especially about illegal activities.
- Of a light yellow colour.