It seems that whenever I install an RPM whose postinstall script calls mkfontdir, abiword decides it's had enough and it won't start up again without a reinstall of the rpm. This is with the 0.7.11 rpm from rawhide.
It also seems that abiword prefers to be uninstalled and reinstalled, rather than installed over itself with --replacepkgs. With a reinstall rather than uninstall/reinstall, it segfaults.
Nevermind. abiword from rawhide seems to have quite a few issues, many moreso than the stable version. I'm downgrading for now.