A beginner's question: We know: "Since order-equivalence is an equivalence relation, it partitions the class of all sets into equivalence classes." (from [Wikipedia][1]) This holds since every set can be (well-)ordered by the Axiom of Choice. But there can be many (well-)orderings of a given set. Especially, the Axiom of Choice doesn't tell us, *what* the choice function is and thus, what the well-ordering is: there can be many. Thus, a set can belong to many order types and order-equivalence isn't an equivalence relation anymore. > What's wrong with this (presumably dummy) line of thoughts? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_type