Same question with 靉. I know together they make a literary translation of 'dark' in the context of clouds.
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I am sure neither is used in modern Chinese. Similarly, 黷 in 窮兵黷武 means "wantonly" But is not used independently as a meaningful character in day-to-day writing.– Tang Ho ♦Commented Oct 5, 2021 at 0:31
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2 Answers
As a native speaker, I have to admit that this is the first time that I see these two characters.
By the help of dictionaries, I found that together 靉靆 means very cloudy so that it's dark. A new meaning appeared in the Ming Dynasty to mean glasses.
靉靆 is a 叠韵连绵词. Not sure how to translate the term, but it means a word that is made of two characters (syllables) which have the same vowel; it has only one morpheme. That is each character alone cannot be used to express a meaning; they have to be used together.
宋本廣韻:《廣韻·去聲·代·代》靆：靉靆雲狀。
康熙字典: 《玉篇》靆: 不明貌。《正韻》𠀤蕩亥切，音駘。義同。
《游宦紀聞》：汲泉滿池，粲粲相輝，半月止墨，玄雲（黑炎）"靆"而下，古人制作之精如此。
I can't explain/translate the sentence though :)
