How about Forth as a compilation target for other languages. But you can dig in and define words for common patterns and the higher level code will be compiled down to that custom vocabulary instead.
There are a few optimizing forth compilers, but I never have seen compelling evidence that they would be faster than an optimized c compiler.
Forth also has seen comparatively little work lately - only a small number of people use it (for better or worse). Micropython might be eating Forth's lunch on many embedded systems that have a lot more memory/ resources now.
As a counterpoint, I found https://www.1-9-9-1.com/ which looks like a lot of fun.