On 03/12/2011 03:14, Lieutenant Scott wrote:
Of course, it's part of the illiteracy of the age that people cannot
distinguish between multiply and divide.

Your first paragraph explains my point well. Five times less is easy to
understand, five divide less sounds stupid and is not required anyway.
The word less obviously means you are LOWERING the number. Five
indicates by how much. Times does not have to mean multiply. It can
mean the number of times you do something. I divide a piece of apple
pie into 5 parts. I have created a part FIVE TIMES.

Would you care to construct a meaningful sentence linking 'five times'
and 'pie' and meaning divided (or dividing) the pie into five equal
portions.

Time like many words can have more than one meaning. My Collins
dictionary actually lists 62 distinct meanings, most in the singular,
but none implying divide.

The definition you are ignoring is:

17 (pl.) indicating a degree or amount calculated by multiplication with
the number specified: ten times three is thirty; he earns four times as
much as me."

--
Roger Chapman