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Я в книге нашёл формулировку "худой мир"
И в какой-то момент (я был тогда совсем маленьким и знал всё это только в пересказе) вспыхнула даже маленькая война, окончившаяся худым миром.
Правильно ли я понял, что здесь худой значит невыгодный; такой, который нам не нравится?
"Худой мир лучше доброй ссоры"
Думаю, автор имеет в виду эту пословицу. Здесь "худой мир" - непрочный, ненадежный, плохой. "Добрая ссора" - не "kind", а "сильная, серьезная".
Худой has archaic meaning "bad", which persists in comparative хуже "worse" and superlative худший "worst".
Худой мир means "bad peace". It's a part of a proverb худой мир лучше доброй ссоры "a bad peace is better than a good quarrel".
It's better translated into English as "a lean settlement is better than a fat lawsuit" which has exactly same wordplay.
Худой мир here means unfriendly peace. Cold peace. No war, but no friendship either.
The citation is obviously based on the proverb "Худой мир лучше доброй ссоры", already mentioned by Nick.
In the mentioned proverb the word худой has every meaning of the word худой. That means both already mentioned 'unfriendly' and 'unprofitable', but also 'dishonest', or 'ugly' etc. The same about the high quality of the quarrel. The thought is that any peace is better than any quarrel. And because of this mute any, you can use really absolutely any description.
The word "худой" is used there instead of "любой" for exaggeration of universality of the rule. It could be "даже худой", but the shortening of the sentence usually makes it to sound more strong.
The precise meaning "худой" in маленькая война, окончившаяся худым миром must be found in the adverb (or predicative) худо, not in the adjective худой.
Compare the scattered meanings of худой, and the word худо, that has precise, exactly one meaning -- ill, badly.
The same scattered meanings will be exists for other words (not for all, of course), which can be narrowed down to its underlying definition by look up its adverb or predicative with the same root in a dictionary:
крепкий -> крепко
вольный -> вольно
любимый -> любо
сухой -> сухо
Rule of thumb: try to find a word as close (short) to the stem (root) as possible.
