Interpretation of the adjective "outstanding"

Question

In my holidays I met a woman who is originally from Australia. She told me she lived in many places due to her husband's work and also traveled much around the world. Although she's already seen many places, she added that there are still a lot of places she'd really love to go to. I asked her:

Which places are outstanding?

What I actually intended to ask is which places she want to visit but she answered that question regarding which places she considers as most amazing.

I was aware of the other meaning of outstanding but I didn't expected she to perceive the question that way since the previous sentence of her was about "she hasn't seen everything yet".

Probably the sentence had been more clear if I'd say "still outstanding" but I now wonder if the usage of outstanding regarding "not yet done" is less common that people tend to interpret it as "excellent" if reasonable in context (which indeed is in this context).

Furthermore, is it perhaps an unusual collocation of outstanding and places regarding "not yet done". Considering examples of OALD and M-W Learner's Dictionary, they are limited to "unpaid" and "still existing problems". "Not yet visited places" are neither problems nor money issues.

---

I don't use australian-english as I don't want to restrict this question to one particular area. I don't believe there's a specific interpretation of this word peculiar to Australian English. For that reason, opinions from British and American people are also appreciated.

Answer 1

If you think about the word outstanding itself, you'd notice how it generally means "unique in a group of similar objects or people (stands out, get it?).

It thus can both refer to something that is not-yet-done (while it's supposed to be, because the group that it belongs to has mostly done stuff), but it can also refer to a certain positive quality of uniqueness.

For me, however, the common idiom seems to be to usually use outstanding to mean astonishing, great, impressive, unique, unless followed by something that explicitly implies a task-based logic:

This is outstanding work, Harry Potter! (surely means 'great work', not 'work to be done').

I'll make a list of some outstanding tasks. (one can argue that the speaker has great tasks to do, but he/she probably meant not-yet-done).

In the end, it's all about context. In your question:

What are some outstanding places?

it seems a bit awkward to assume either interpretation. I would've said:

What are some places you're planning to visit?

Or:

What are some places you haven't yet been to?

Or even:

What places are on top of your list?

But this is going outside the scope of your question.