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I keep hearing that here, and people have good reasons why they think of that but to me sideloading always meant having your phone physically next to the device you're pulling an apk from, in other words loading the app from the side.

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I always thought of it as coming from side-channel. Which (until I searched just now and was only offered side channel attacks as a result) I generally construed it as a good thing because the system was assumed to be broken. Things like track 2 diplomacy or messaging the CEO/minister because customer service/bureaucracy was broken. You can go in the side door of a business if you own it or belong there, only dis-empowered customers are forced to go in the front.

Side loading was getting something to work because it should when the system hadn't caught up to the fact that it should work.

Yeah, that strikes me as a familiar use also. They seem to be using it to mean not only that but any software installation that doesn't happen via the Play Store, so it's rooted in real history but also conveniently re-appropriated to imply it's veering outside of typically intended use cases.

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