What does the French phrase "comme ci, comme ca" mean to you?

Putting this in IMHO and googling it seems to come up with a number of different interpretations of its meaning in English. Literally it means “like this, like that” in French, but as to the contextual meaning answers vary from being akin to “It’s all good” to “meh”, to just a step above tolerable.

What does “comme ci, comme ca” mean to you?

You know…

<wiggles hand>

like… so-so.

Mediocre.

It’s ok, like.

Whatever.

So-so; not particularly good, not particularly bad.

Another vote for ‘so-so’

Another vote for “so-so”, although my ex-mother-in-law used to use it with a tinge of “meh” as well.

‘some you win, some you loose’

means the same thing as “medso-medso” (sp?) in Italian. :smiley:

It’s middling… nothing wrong with it, but basically just ok.

Yeah. ‘Eeeh, so-so.’

I’ve been worse.

Yep: not good, not bad, just so-so.

“It is what it is.”
“You win some, you lose some.”

Interesting to see the differences. Appearantly I’m not the only one that sees it as ‘you win some, you lose some’, but that is still quite different from the majority of ‘meh’.

“So-so.”

Someone once pointed out that the equivalent terms in other languages is usually a reduplicative:

comme ci, comme ca (French)
asi asi (Spanish)
sa som sa (Danish)
etsky ketsky (greek)
zozo (Dutch)
svo-svo (Icelandic)
sa sa (Swedish)
asim-asim (Portuguese)
zozo (Afrikaans)
ma made (Japanese)
mamahuhu (Chinese)

Comment ça va? Comme ci, comme ça.
How is it going? So-so; OK; can’t complain…

You need to put it in its full context. Would any of you answer “how is it going?” with “you win some, you lose some”?

Kacha-kacha (Hebrew).

Oh, you know, strikes and gutters, man. Strikes and gutters.

I think the closest American response to “How’s it going?” would probably be “It’s going.”

To me, ‘it’s going’ is much more negative. That’s like saying, ‘the only good thing I can say about today is that I’m not dead’. ‘Comme ci, comme ca’ is more like, ‘oh, can’t complain’, or, ‘not too bad, not too bad’. Not fantastic, but not bad, either.

Gay. Or up-and-down.

Cum see, cum saw?