I read it from a light novel called “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”. The full sentence is:
“俺たちはまた森林公園広場に舞い戻った。”
In which the context is that the main characters tried to shoot a scene in the forest park but was driven out for causing too much trouble and then came back to re-shoot. As aforementioned, the part I’m confused about is why use the “舞い” when you could have simply just said “戻った”. I don’t think it even has some sort of a subtle difference they literally have the same meaning which is why I’m confused.
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The verb is a compound verb – kind of a verb+adverb compound. 舞う can mean “to flit” and of course 戻る is “to return.”
So imagine a pigeon being chased by a kid – it gets scared off, but comeback. So the kids, although chased off, shake off the scolding and return to the scene.
To quote some dictionaries
Daijirin: “A person who has been somewhere else for a while comes back to where they originally were”
Daijisen: “Return to one’s original place”
Sanseidou: “(Of a person who has been away) return to one’s original place”
Meikyou: “A person who has left once again returns to where they originally were.”
Shinmeikai: “(After moving about various places) come back to where one originally was”
I’m not sure if I could tell you concretely how this differs from plain old 戻る but I’m sure the sorts of situations in which it is apt to be used may differ. The meaning of a word isn’t only in what it means, but also in *when* it’s used. It seems to be apt when you want to emphasize that someone has been away for a bit but is finally coming back to somewhere.
Anyway, I wouldn’t be so frustrated with why the author is using a different word. I would take this as a learning opportunity to see when this *new* word, 舞い戻る, is used by authors. Sure, they could have used plain old 戻る, but that’s boring and monotonous. After seeing it enough times you’ll develop an intuition for its nuance.