ISO fast-loading Emacs

[kj]

One feature of my shell (zsh) that I particularly like is the
command edit-command-line, which lets one edit the current command
line in $EDITOR (or $VISUAL).  I'd like to do this with Emacs but
my current version of Emacs takes so long to load that it is not
practical for such on-the-fly editing.

All I need is bare-bones Emacs for this.  It would be nice to also
get syntax highlighting with shell-script-mode, though I'm willing
to sacrifice this for the sake of speed.

What should I put in $EDITOR to achieve the fastest loading Emacs?
Is there an Emacs-lite out there?

Thanks!

kj

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