In this paper we present the results of a quantitative evaluation of the discrepancies between the Italian and English lexica in terms of lexical gaps. This evaluation has been carried out in the context of MultiWordNet, an ongoing project that aims at building a multilingual lexical database. The quantitative evaluation of the English-to-Italian lexical gaps shows that the English and Italian lexica are highly comparable and gives empirical support to the MultiWordNet model. 1.