"Three-dimensional points need ordered triples (x, y, z), and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that we could extend this to any number of elements. The question is what to call them, and you do sort of sound like a rocket scientist (or other generic nerd) when you say tuple. (Some people rhyme this word with “Drupal,” and others with “couple,” by the way, and there seems to be no consensus). If you have an ordered-pair-type thing with 5 elements, therefore, it’s a 5-tuple (or a quintuple). If it has 117 elements, it’s a 117-tuple, and there’s really nothing else to call it. The general term (if we don’t know or want to specify how many elements) is n-tuple. In any case, it’s an ordered sequence of elements that may contain duplicates, so it’s very different than a set."