The phenomenon of nonlinear Landau damping is investigated for damping on an adiabatic species. It is shown that the cancellation which leads to the(&kgr;&lgr;D)4dependence for damping on a hydrodynamic species no longer occurs; rather, the four‐wave resonance term (driven spectra term) of the governing matrix element dominates the resonant three‐wave term (induced spectra term), leading to the conjecture that, for a plasma with an adiabatic constituent, nonlinear Landau damping on that constituent may well dominate the nonlinear mode coupling processes. A detailed investigation of such damping is conducted for the case of two equidense zero temperature ion beams streaming through a hot, adiabatic electron plasma. A nonlinear Landau damping instability on the electrons is found which cannot be limited in the usual quasilinear sense. The instability serves to heat the electrons driving the system to a linear ion‐ion streaming instability.