extraspecial? is that correct? no space or hyphen?

Question

Spelling list of fourth grade son has the word extraspecial. No hyphen or space. Is that correct?

Answer 1

My guess is that extra here was combined with special to make one word on analogy with such standard spellings as extraordinary and extraterrestrial (and even with such established forms sometimes I see a hyphen inserted I guess to "break up" the vowel sounds, e.g., "extra-ordinary"). And some combinations of extra and an adjective are so relatively new that including a hyphen in the combination is quite common, e.g., extra-territorial alongside extraterritorial. A good rule of thumb is if you find a compound of extra and another word given in a standard dictionary written together without a hyphen, then that's a pretty sure indication that the spelling is accepted. 

 

But the problem, I think, is that in contrast to the meaning of extra in all the examples I cited above, i.e., where extra means 'outside of' or 'beyond' in a literal or figurative positional sense, in "extraspecial" extra is really being used here as an intensifier much like very; that is, the intended sense seems to be 'very special' or 'really special' and not something like 'outside of the quality of being special', which would actually mean 'not special'. In this usage, then, I don't believe extra should be combined with a following adjective even if you put a hyphen in between them, so I'd write extra special.

Answer 2

Unless the fourth grade spelling group is intended to include mathematical terms for complicated exponential groups of equations, the word "extraspecial" should not be joined in such a manner.

 

As you wrote in your question, "extra" and "special" should share a hyphen when the two words are describing a single noun together and in all other cases I can think of, the words should remain separate. Actually, I can think of one other situation where hyphenation would be appropriate to use in a non-adjective form, but it involves 19th century legislature and newspaper editions.