Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook American Heritage Coll. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. If this etymology seems slightly out of sync for a substance that helps other substances come together and react, consider that the term was first used to describe political situations, especially the breaking apart of governments. By the mid-1800s, though, the political meaning had been rendered obsolete and the term had become part of the lexicon of chemists. Today, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without undergoing any permanent chemical change itself.
Enzymes are a special type of catalyst.
They are biochemical in nature, are produced by living organisms, and are usually proteins. Deciding which term you should use depends upon the type of reaction you are describing. 4 Another type of compound that is often seen to behave as a reaction enhancer in the body is the vitamin. Like enzymes, these organic compounds are essential in small quantities for the normal functioning of the body. The term vitamin came into use in the early 1900s as a result of the research of Casimir Funk, a Polish-American biochemist.