The other day means recently, on a day not worth naming. Some point in the last week or two.
The vagueness is deliberate and entirely accepted, since nobody asks which day. It is one of the standard openings of a story in conversation, and I saw him the other day is how a great many British anecdotes begin. There is a family of these, since the other week and the other night work the same way, and all of them mean somewhere in the recent past.
1phrasethe other dayRecently, on an unspecified recent day.
“I ran into your brother the other day.”
Practised in Idioms, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.
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