This has been rattling around in the back of my mind for many years (way before Stack Exchange came into existence), so it's a relief to finally ask the question.
There are words that can be "contracted" by removing one or more letter(s) (without changing the order of the letters) to form a shorter word with the same meaning, or one very close to it.
The two strongest examples I can think of right now are:
rapscallion -> rascal
and
satiate -> sate
This is a slightly weaker example:
rapine -> rape
Even though "rape" has come, in modern usage, to refer almost exclusively to a sexual crime, it can still be used in a more literary (and purposefully anachronistic) sense to mean "the plunder and pillage of a country or region". In that sense, "rape" can be used in a similar fashion to "rapine"; in any case, the two words are etymologically related to the Latin rapere which is tied to the archaic usage.
Another weaker example:
transliterate -> translate
These words are near-synonyms, but there is a definite difference in their meaning. Still, I guess this pair would qualify, albeit in a looser sense.
I wanted to exclude some relatively trivial examples, such as:
(inflammable -> flammable)
(perambulate -> ambulate)
and so forth. So I've imposed the additional rule (arbitrary though it may seem) that the "stripped" letters must not come from the start or the end of the word, but only from its middle.
Acronyms and portmanteaus are also excluded, as are "slangier" contractions e.g.:
(modulator-demodulator -> modem)
(motor-hotel -> motel)
(certitude or certainty or certificate -> cert)
I guess the long-short forms of the same word would form a linguistic doublet. I've coined the term "telescoping word" to describe the long form that "collapses" into the short form with letter deletion sans anagramming.
My question is: has this phenomenon already been studied? If so, what name have authorities given it? Is there already an existing reference or resource on it? Thanks in advance.
(This is not a duplicate of Is there a term for a word inside another word?, as that is asking about the more general phenomenon of words (not necessarily synonyms) occurring within larger words. In fact, the question specifically mentions "kangaroo word" and states that a broader scope is being sought.)