干巴巴 (gānbābā) literally means 'dry and arid' and is used to describe something bland, uninteresting, or lacking emotion — e.g., 干巴巴的文章 ('a dry, dull article'). It also has an idiomatic adverbial meaning of 'directly, bluntly, without further ado' — when you say something 干巴巴, you say it flatly without any softening. The reduplicative structure 巴巴 adds vividness; the word is colloquial and often carries a slightly negative tone.