Meaning
Only; nothing but; plain and unaccompanied. 'So-so rice' is just rice by itself with nothing to go with it, and 'so-so water' is plain water, so the word stresses that a thing is bare, unmixed, or lacking what should come with it. It marks a meagre, unadorned, incomplete state — food without its trimmings, a thing on its own — and it carries a faint note of want or disappointment, since 'so-so' something is that something and nothing more, stripped of the fuller company it ought to keep.
Examples
-
Wi neva have nutten, so wi eat so-so rice.
We had nothing, so we ate plain rice by itself.
-
Di soup taste like so-so water.
The soup tastes like nothing but plain water.
-
A so-so man deh a di meeting, no woman at all.
It was only men at the meeting, no women at all.
Origin
A reduplication of 'so' used as an intensifier meaning 'merely/only' — the doubling stressing that a thing is bare or unaccompanied.
How it’s used
Means 'only/nothing but', not the English 'so-so' (mediocre). Context: 'so-so [X]' = just X alone.