What did you do the other day?
Was it a trip to the shop yesterday? A work meeting last week? Or that summer holiday you went on in July?
To some, the phrase ‘the other day’, means no more than a mere 48 hours ago — for others, its at any point in the 21st century.
Idioms like this can cause confusion when chatting, similar to vague phrases like ‘around the corner’ or ‘miles away’.
On the r/AskUK subreddit, the topic of when exactly ‘the other day’ is, sparked passionate debate.
Poster @KojoSlayer argued: ‘A week max. Two months ago is not the other day; that is just poor calendar management.’
Some were more vague though, with @Active-Strawberry-37 joking: ‘If it’s my dad, anywhere between last Tuesday and 1994.
And @Leebles84 noted: ‘Anywhere between yesterday and sometime in the last decade.’
What do language experts say?
Dr Luke Jones, is the director of the Time Perception Lab at Manchester University, which studies the mechanics behind the mind’s sense of time.
He tells Metro: ‘We are generally not very good at remembering exactly when things happened, particularly relatively mundane events.
‘Expressions like this are useful because they allow us to communicate roughly when something happened without having to be particularly precise.’
Dr Luke says this idiom is ‘flexible’. He continues: ‘We generally understand it to mean something that happened relatively recently, but exactly what we mean by “recently” will depend on the context.
@bkharthun What does “the other day” even mean??? Does anyone use it truthfully? #theotherday #otherday #yesterday
♬ original sound – Toon
‘Different people have quite different ideas about how far back the expression can reasonably be applied.’
A factor that can affect how we might us the phrase, is age.
Dr Luke says: ‘There is some evidence that our subjective experience of the passage of time changes as we get older.
‘Older people often report that time seems to pass more quickly.
‘We also know that people can be quite inaccurate when remembering when events occurred, sometimes recalling events as being more recent than they actually were.
‘So it’s possible that these factors might contribute to older people using “the other day” to refer to events that happened quite some time ago.’
Personally, Dr Luke has his own opinions: ‘I would probably a week, although it might stretch to a fortnight!
‘If someone told me that something happened “the other day” and it turned out to have been six months ago, I think I’d be rather surprised.’
Why can’t we agree?
Lead therapist at Brain Botanics Therapy, Rebecca Mackillop, explains the confusion comes when one person in a conversation takes the phrase literally.
She tells Metro: ‘The issue comes when the listener assumes the phrase carries a specific timeframe.
‘This can be especially frustrating for people who value precision or experience anxiety around ambiguity.’
She concludes: ‘Treat vague language as an invitation to clarify rather than evidence that someone is being careless.
‘The phrase is a conversational shortcut, not an attempt to give an accurate date.’
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