It's just inversion, like 2 to the power of 2 or 2 to the power of negative 2. These negative words inverse it just the same. You may dislike it, but millions of people have spoken this way for a long time.

> x literally means multiply

And some use the dot operator or even 2(3) or (2)(3). When programming, we tend to use *.

Nobody says times to mean divide. The word "negative" is what is doing the inversion for you in your example.