When people try to explain what a return means in php what is it meant when they say this.

They simply mean that return is used as a means for a function to give a value back to what called it, the actual value that is returned is whatever follows the return statement. So "return $something" would return whatever was stored within the "something" variable.

Let's say you wanted to make a function that added two numbers together and then gave you the answer, to do that you have to use return like this:

<?php
function sum($a, $b) {
    $c = $a + $b;
    return $c;
}

$result = sum(5, 10);
// $result now hold the value 15, as that is the result that the sum method returned.
?>

You can pretty much think of it as doing the reverse of supplying an argument to a function. Instead of passing a value to the function, you are receiving a value from the function, which can then be used outside of it.