AskMen has a pretty nifty post about the 5 things you didn't know about Shakespeare. Take, for instance, the word "torture" - yep, good ol' Will invented it (well, technically he made the noun "torture" which existed at the time into the verb form):
3- Shakespeare invented "torture"
Shakespeare didn't just invent "torture," but also "excitement," "addiction" and "savagery." Another of the five things you might not have known about Shakespeare is just how much he's influenced the English language. Our man Will invented about 1,700 words in the English language. A remarkable number of the phrases and words we use every day first appeared in Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare converted verbs into adjectives or nouns into verbs whenever it suited him. Amazingly, his linguistic inventions stuck, and we still use them today.
The mistake comes because proper dictionaries, like the OED, have to have a citation -- an example of the first time that word, used in that way, is known to have been used.
Shakespeare is a famous writer whose plays have survived better and are better known than most of the other writers from his time.
So when they go looking for a citation, often Shakespeare is where they find the earliest example. So he has a lot of citations to his name. But he didn't make up the words.
Said more about them than me IMO.