Think of a square that is 8 by 8. The area of this square is 8*8 = 64
Put another way, 8 squared = 8^2 = 8*8 = 64
The square root will undo what squaring does. The square root of 64 is 8. We're just going in reverse. Your teacher will use "inverse" as a fancy math way of saying "opposite" or "reverse"