How to Use so-so in a Sentence

so-so

adverb
  • Just a so-so first half for a player elected for the fifth time as a starter.
    Gabe Lacques, USA TODAY, 29 June 2023
  • Music soars in so-so rom-com about how a heart will go on.
    Common Sense Media, Washington Post, 13 May 2023
  • For cutting up game, the Companion Spark does a so-so job.
    Matthew Every, Field & Stream, 4 Jan. 2024
  • The Slow Time ability can make a so-so archer feel like Legolas.
    Eric Ravenscraft, WIRED, 3 Sep. 2023
  • After a so-so start against the Tigers, Sale fell flat against the Rays last week, yielding five runs in just four innings.
    Julian McWilliams, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Apr. 2023
  • The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes is coming off a so-so (for him) season but has zero to prove as a two-time champ.
    Greg Cote, Miami Herald, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Ripley won the match with a superplex followed by a Riptide in a so-so main event.
    Alfred Konuwa, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2024
  • Take pressure off that so-so secondary by turning up the heat right away against Mayfield.
    Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times, 18 Jan. 2024
  • The Texans and Colts simply are not equipped to punish the Ravens for starting so-so cornerbacks.
    Childs Walker, Baltimore Sun, 8 Sep. 2023
  • In 2020, a late-summer dry lightning burst sparked scores of fires, turning a so-so season into the state’s worst on record.
    Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times, 8 Mar. 2024
  • The 49ers are so-so against the run and have been punished in the playoffs: Green Bay and Detroit averaged a combined 5.6 yards per carry.
    Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Despite a so-so season, the Penguins controlled their playoff fate this week, needing to beat two of the league's worst teams to claim a wild-card spot.
    Mike Brehm, USA TODAY, 13 Apr. 2023
  • The river also is fed by melting snowpack in Colorado, which this year has seen a so-so snow season.
    Brooke Staggs, Orange County Register, 6 Feb. 2024
  • Taking the long view then, 2023, is, at best, a so-so candidate in the superlative badness sweepstakes.
    Thomas Doherty, The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Dec. 2023
  • Schatz’s method nicks them for so-so competition and for rolling up their huge offensive totals in a dome.
    Childs Walker, Baltimore Sun, 8 Feb. 2024
  • Ferguson spent six so-so years in Green Bay, never catching more than 38 passes in a season.
    Jr Radcliffe, Journal Sentinel, 24 Apr. 2023
  • But Saturday night was a marked improvement over the typical so-so starts Gonsolin had delivered for most of the past 3½ months.
    Mike Digiovanna, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2023
  • Things go from meh to worse when her best friend is laid off and her so-so relationship takes an unexpected and life-altering twist.
    The Editors, townandcountrymag.com, 4 Apr. 2023
  • The album is a so-so buffet of sounds that get called contemporary or urban: music that could have been produced at any point in the last 25 years, which isn’t the same as calling it timeless.
    Wesley Morris, New York Times, 22 Feb. 2024
  • Even an ultralight chair with so-so comfort will be more comfortable than sitting directly on the ground.
    Suzie Dundas, Popular Mechanics, 2 June 2023
  • The veteran character actor has been magnetic on the trail, and now looks set for his first career nomination — a sign of how a well-run campaign can overcome a so-so film.
    Vulture, 22 Jan. 2024
  • Unlike John Guillermin’s so-so 1978 version, that one forgot not to take itself too seriously.
    Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Sep. 2023
  • Neither do the engine and the close-ratio five-speed transmission make for exceptional fuel mileage, the EPA city figure of 21 mpg ranking no more than so-so in this hard-fought category.
    Larry Griffin, Car and Driver, 18 Apr. 2023
  • Denver quarterback Russell Wilson has rebounded a bit under first-year head coach Sean Payton, but the results remain so-so.
    Jeff Miller, Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 2023
  • Behind every so-so movie, after all, is a potentially great director’s cut.
    Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2023
  • Outlook: Applegate and Cardellini landed nominations for the program’s stellar first season and then went missing (as did the entire series) after a so-so follow-up.
    Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2023
  • But complicating factors include a so-so B CinemaScore from audiences (the first pic earned an A-) and unfavorable reviews.
    Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 May 2023
  • Dessert selections were so-so, other than a pretty and pretty good strawberry pavlova, but giving a server carte blanche on concocting a chocolate lover’s sundae yielded sinfully delicious results.
    David Dickstein, Hartford Courant, 14 Jan. 2024
  • There’s also that heavily hyped motorcycle jump, a surprisingly so-so affair compared to Cruise’s past, potentially terminal stunts; blame the presentation, which doesn’t quite do the heavy preparation and execution of the sequence justice.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 5 July 2023
  • This fun, if counterintuitive, strategy celebrates function and can add an unexpected layer of complexity to an otherwise so-so room.
    David Eardley, WSJ, 7 July 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'so-so.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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