Word.ws English Dictionary

so-so

/ˈsəʊˌsəʊ/

so-so adjective: neither good nor bad; tolerable, passable, indifferent.

Adjective

so-so (not comparable)

  1. (informal) Neither good nor bad; tolerable, passable, indifferent.
    • The dessert was pretty good, but the meal was so-so.
    • [I]n ſome Iriſh Houſes, vvhere things are ſo-ſo, / One Gammon of Bacon hangs up for a ſhow; […]1765, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to Lord Clare, Dublin: […] W. Whitestone, […], published 1776, →OCLC, page 5

Adverb

so-so (not comparable)

  1. (informal) Neither very well nor very poorly.
    • He performed so-so during the tryouts, and the coach was undecided whether to add him to the team or not.

so-so meaning in Malayalam, Arabic, Indonesian and Thai

so-so in Malayalam

averge, mediocre, indifferent
തരക്കേടില്ലാത്ത, ഏതാണ്ടു തൃപ്തികരമായ, അത്രനല്ലതും അത്രചീത്തയുമല്ലാത്ത, മദ്ധ്യമ, മാദ്ധ്യസ്ഥ, ഇടത്തരമായ

so-so in Arabic

neither good nor bad
بَيْنَ بَيْنَ bayna bayna
neither well nor poorly
نِصْف نِصْف niṣf niṣf, نُصّ نُصّ nuṣṣ nuṣṣ

so-so in Indonesian

neither good nor bad
biasa saja

so-so in Thai

neither well nor poorly
งั้น ๆ ngán-ngán, เรื่อย ๆ rʉ̂ai-rʉ̂ai, เฉย ๆ chə̌əi-chə̌əi
More languagesFewer languages
so-so in Vietnamese
tàm tạm

Synonyms of so-so

20 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of so-so

Origin of so-so

From Middle English so so, from Old English swā swā, equivalent to so + so. Compare Dutch zozo (“so-so”), German soso (“so-so”), Norwegian så som så (“so-so”).

Words formed from so-so

Words that rhyme with so-so

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about so-so

What does so-so mean?
So-so means neither good nor bad; tolerable, passable, indifferent.
What is so-so in Malayalam?
So-so in Malayalam is തരക്കേടില്ലാത്ത, ഏതാണ്ടു തൃപ്തികരമായ, അത്രനല്ലതും അത്രചീത്തയുമല്ലാത്ത. See So-so meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is so-so?
So-so can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce so-so?
So-so is pronounced /ˈsəʊˌsəʊ/.

Words near so-so in the dictionary

  1. SO-DIMM
  2. SO-DIMMs
  3. so-iuy mullet
  4. so-iuy mullets
  5. so-manieth
  6. so-so
  7. so-soish
  8. so.
  9. So. Be.
  10. So.Be.
  11. SO15

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: so-so (page history and authors); so-so (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-so-so.ogg.

Cite this entry: “so-so.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/so-so. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.