Claim: Tuplet, which is used in music indicated by a number, comes from a rebracketing of compound words which would be incorrect if utilized in a mathematical context.
Evidence: In music, a tuplet (also irrational rhythm or groupings, artificial division or groupings, abnormal divisions, irregular rhythm, gruppetto, extra-metric groupings, or, rarely, contrametric rhythm) is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the time-signature (e.g., triplets, duplets, etc.)" (, 266). This is indicated by a number (or sometimes two), indicating the fraction involved. The notes involved are also often grouped with a bracket or (in older notation) a slur. The modern term 'tuplet' comes from a rebracketing of compound words like quintu(s)-(u)plet and sextu(s)-(u)plet, and from related mathematical terms such as "tuple", "-uplet" and "-plet", which are used to form terms denoting multiplets (Oxford English Dictionary, entries "multiplet", "-plet, comb. The term would be incorrect if used in the mathematical sense (because the note-values are rational fractions) or in the more general sense of "unreasonable, utterly illogical, absurd". In mathematics, the irrational numbers are all the real numbers which are not rational numbers. That is, irrational numbers cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. As a consequence of Cantor's proof that the real numbers are uncountable and the rationals countable, it follows that almost all real numbers are irrational. Almost all irrational numbers are transcendental and all real transcendental numbers are irrational (there are also complex transcendental numbers): the article on transcendental numbers lists several examples. Dov Jarden gave a simple non-constructive proof that there exist two irrational numbers a and b, such that a is rational: Consider √2; if this is rational, then take a = b = √2. Otherwise, take a to be the irrational number √2 and b = √2.